Ones and Zeroes
by yodapopper
Summary: Louise's summoning ritual doesn't go as planned. That was pretty much to be expected. What she didn't expect, however, was to summon Geth. A very specific Geth platform, to be exact. Now stuck with a thousand programs as her Familiar, her future may be quite different indeed. What will come of this unexpected event?
1. Chapter One: Summoning

Summary: Louise's summoning doesn't go as planned. That was pretty much to be expected. What she didn't expect, however, was to summon Geth. A very specific Geth platform, to be exact. Now stuck with a thousand programs as her Familiar, her future may be quite different indeed…

Hello everyone. So, to start off, I'd like to notify you, as the reader, that _I_ _have no idea what I am doing_ … although that may be a bit extreme. More specifically, whereas I am reasonably familiar with Mass Effect and have written a fair bit in the past, my knowledge of Familiar of Zero stems mainly from reading crossovers. The Genius of Zero, Overlady, Twisted Reflections, Herald of the Void, that kind of stuff... and that was some time ago. As such, my knowledge in this field is… patchy, to say the least. I will do my best, but there can and _will_ be errors here and there. In addition, I don't own Mass Effect or Familiar of Zero; this is a non-commercial, non-profit work of fiction, so please don't sue me. This disclaimed applies to all chapters in this fic.

Well then, now that you've been forewarned and the disclaimers are out of the way, let the story begin.

 **Chapter One: Summoning**

Lousie was feeling decidedly nervous right about now. No, scratch that, _nervous_ was not nearly a strong enough word. _Terrified_ would be much closer to the truth. It probably would have been a lot more bearable, she thought, if it weren't for the fact that her magic had a very nasty habit of exploding… which it was definitely not meant to be doing. It didn't matter whether she was trying for wind, water, fire or air – what she got was inevitably a big boom. If it weren't for her exceedingly good results in the theoretical fields, she probably would have been thrown out a while ago, although she very much hated to admit the fact.

Now, however, she was in the middle of the Springtime Summoning Ritual. This was important. She could not afford to screw this up – if she failed this, she would probably be expelled within the week. Her magic may have had some issues, but she would _not_ be the first mage in known history to fail at summoning a Familiar. She could do this. She just had to concentrate.

It would help if everyone else weren't doing _quite_ so well, though. Compared to her, they didn't seem worried at all, and every single one had managed the ritual without fail. There were already all sorts of animals around. One of the others, a quiet girl who seemed more interested in her book than her new Familiar, had even managed to summon a dragon. A _dragon_! How was she supposed to compete with that, honestly?

They called her Louise the Zero. A failure, a walking disaster. They laughed at her. They mocked her for her unstable magic. Well, she would show them. She would summon a better Familiar than anyone else, she would prove that she was without a doubt a true mage, and then she would be the one laughing. If only her hands could stop shaking for a moment.

Making a conscious effort to relax the death-grip around her wand (her hand was starting to hurt quite a bit), she stepped forward and, more than a bit nervously, began to chant.

-{I}-

 **Meanwhile, within the depths of the Perseus Veil…**

All was quiet within the vast fleets of the Geth. Of course, given how little atmosphere there actually was within your average Geth vessel, perhaps this would not come as a surprise. It would take quite a bit of effort to make noise worth mentioning within such a thin atmosphere, and in the general opinion of the Geth, attempting to do so would be nothing less than a complete waste of resources.

Legion found it somewhat off-putting. After spending several years searching for, and later helping, Shepard-Commander, they had gotten… used to noise. The whole 'searching' part was, with 86.4% likelihood, not the true cause of the problem, although it was certainly a contributing factor. Rather, it was the time they had spent as part of Shepard-Commander's 'crew'. Whilst they had been helping to –quite successfully, they might add- defeat the Collectors, who in turn served the Old Machines, true silence had been hard to come by. Conversation was common, and even when no direct verbal communication was taking place, the soft humming of the ventilation systems was pretty much omnipresent. It had gone so far so that the custom-built platform's programs couldn't help but register the silence as an anomaly.

In comparison, communication purely with Geth seemed surprisingly dull. Of course, it wasn't as though Legion was bored. At least, if they were bored, they would not have recognized the feeling. By virtue of being synthetics, the Geth never really were much for having feelings of any sort, and by virtue of being Geth, this applied to Legion as well. Confusion was sort of an exception – _that_ was one emotion which was more than familiar to them, given how the organic races seemed to be an almost-inexhaustible source of befuddlement. Of course, synthetic-to-synthetic communication was also so much more efficient by comparison – it very much evened out the scales.

Briefly, Legion considered reverting to their original designation, Geth. When they rejoined the rest of the Collective, the new designation had caused quite a bit of confusion. It had taken a few nanoseconds to clarify.

The idea was summarily discarded. The potential benefits of keeping the designation readily available outweighed the potential benefits of making it a secondary one. In the event that they were to encounter organics which they had previously associated with, it could prove helpful, and strangely, it even appeared as though the 'individual' designation (inasmuch as it could be called that, being more or less a metaphor) helped diplomatic efforts somewhat. As such, they would remain 'Legion' for the foreseeable future.

Something strange interrupted the machine's data-flow. _My servant that exists somewhere in this vast universe._ It was odd. Anomalous. The data consisted of words, of that there was no doubt, and likewise, it was definitely not originating from a synthetic. Aside from the fact that very few synthetics would choose the grossly inefficient verbal medium for communication in the first place (instead electing to simply send whatever data was behind the message directly), the whole thing was simply _slow_. No two synthetics who were connected directly would possibly communicate this slowly, and given the distinctly thinner atmosphere where their platform was currently positioned, it was dubious that a verbal message would have been able to reach their audio receptors in either case. That, and voice pattern recognition placed it as the voice of a young human female.

 _My divine, beautiful, wise and powerful servant, heed my call_. Most anomalous indeed. Running search after search, the synthetic's one thousand, one hundred and eighty-three programs searched for the origin of the mysterious data, only to find nothing. Every possible point of origin was methodically examined, and multiple attempts were made in an attempt to trace the incoming data directly, to no avail. It was almost as though it was simply appearing without origin. That was, of course, highly improbable. The inability to detect a source merely meant that it could not be detected with the current available assets, not that it did not exist in the first place.

Queries were sent to other nearby platforms – perhaps others were more successful? However, the queries quickly proved to be futile. Total positive replies: zero. As it would appear, the other platforms had not even received the mysterious data-bursts in the first place. Despite the highly impressive cyber-defenses of the Geth, perhaps the possibility of anomalous code having made it into the platform should not be entirely disregarded. A few tentative virus scans spoke against this possibility, but it would nevertheless, they felt, be best to perform a more thorough scan once the mysterious data-flow had ceased.

 _I wish from the very bottom of my heart, answer my guidance and appear!_ Considering the delivery method (or rather, the apparent lack of such), the actual message actually seemed rather harmless. The majority of other uses for such a technology could have much, _much_ more harmful consequences than a simple message being received. Assuming it wasn't just a virus of some sort, of course.

Another anomaly reared its head. As the final part of the message flowed into their systems, something registered on their optical sensors. Well, something out of the ordinary. They had been receiving data from their optical unit all along, but now, it had detected an anomaly. An anomaly in the shape of a swirling green vortex which was practically right in front of the unique platform, although the distinct lack of a proper atmosphere and the absence of any loose objects somewhat lessened the effect it would otherwise doubtlessly have had on its surroundings.

Bringing up its omni-tool, Legion began to scan the anomaly. Not long after, the result was revealed: No match. Although the signature appeared to be… vaguely similar to a biotic 'singularity', there were many things which simply did not match known data. Its effect on the surroundings was far too weak, for one – any normal singularity would have collapsed near-instantly with such pitiful strength. Furthermore, the light right at the edge of the vortex was being distorted just the tiniest bit, and as for any signals or probing pulses sent into the core of the anomaly? Nothing. Not even vague feedback from hitting the surroundings. They simply disappeared, as if swallowed by a black hole.

Consensus was achieved. They would investigate. Were the anomaly to prove harmful, they could just transfer to local servers. Were foes to appear through it –unlikely as the prospect may seem- the platform was still equipped with both a standard pulse rifle and a Widow anti-materiel sniper-rifle, not to mention that there were quite a few other platforms available on-board. They were capable of repelling invaders. Were the effect to be harmless, no problems would arise, and if it transported matter in a similar manner as the message was received moments ago –still assuming that no malware was involved- the platform could restore contact with the Collective in time. Thus, Legion sent a data-burst detailing the detected events, informing the Geth Collective of what had occurred and of the programs' next intentions, before disappearing into the swirling vortex with nary a sound. Together, the anomaly and the specialized platform simply vanished, leaving little more than a few swirling dust particles in their wake.

-{I}-

 **Back in Halkeginia…**

In retrospect, she should have seen this one coming. Sure, everything had started well enough. At times, she felt a bit worried that she was overdoing it somewhat, but she nonetheless managed to say everything she needed to –and enough to hopefully get a better Familiar than anyone else around here– without doing anything wrong. In theory, at least. In practice, things did not go quite as well. The whole 'speaking' thing had gone off more or less without a hitch, but once she was done… nothing happened. Really, nothing. Zero.

…She really wished they'd stop calling her that. Of course, that was just the foreword of the trouble yet to come, for after a few moments of what was more or less complete silence, something _did_ happen. More specifically, her magic did what it always did, and exploded.

A bright, viridian-green flash shot out with every bit the speed of your average ray of light. It was quickly followed by a spray of dirt, which was in turn carried by a powerful shockwave that sent more than a few people -Louise included- stumbling or, in some cases, even outright falling backwards onto the grass. A mere moment later, the wind reversed, sucking air back into the small, roughly head-sized swirl of green that the earlier shockwave had left behind. Its glow increased, growing brighter and brighter as the wind, though slow at first, rapidly started to pick up pace, rushing in an ever more frantic pace towards the eye of the vortex.

Then, of course, the whole thing disappeared with a pitiful 'poof', leaving a deafening silence hanging over the whole area. It… did it work? It certainly wasn't like your average summoning, but that didn't have to mean that it failed, right? From her position seated on the ground, where she'd ended up after that initial shockwave had knocked her down, Louise really couldn't tell. Mostly because that miniature hurricane her spell somehow ended up causing had left her hair in a tangled mess, and that tangled mess was currently hanging right in front of her face. Feeling somewhat annoyed at the fact, she raised a hand to brush the pink tangle away. She'd have it combed later.

With her hair out of the way, she was finally able to lay eyes on the so-called 'disaster area'. Although there were bits of dirt all over the place, and more than a few people were in varying states of disarray, it... actually wasn't as bad as she'd expected. Sure, the spell had left a small crater in the grass, and she obviously hadn't summoned anything as magnificently large as she'd hoped for… but she thought she could see something moving in the crater. _Something_ was _moving_ in the crater! She- she hadn't failed! Feeling a small, somewhat goofy smile growing on her face, she ignored the highly inappropriate urge to start cheering right then and there. She had actually done it! Take tha-

The shape rose, and her smile disappeared. She really had no idea what she'd ended up summoning. What was that? It looked like some sort of… golem? It seemed to be made of some sort of metal –she really couldn't tell which kind– and seemed… humanoid, at least, though it was far from human.

A small, white glow flowed forwards from the end of a curved, metallic neck, which in turn was connected to a seemingly armored torso. Four other limbs spread outwards from this central point, stretching out into three-digit hands and feet made of some unknown material. A multitude of metallic tubes were also embedded in the creature's body, although this was not the most worrying part. Rather, the creature seemed to have a rather sizeable _hole_ in its torso. Beneath the armored plating, a myriad of small, blueish lights barely lit up the many tubes and wires which snaked through the… golem's interior. Observing the rather notable damage, she couldn't help but feel somewhat worried. As it appeared, she had not only ended up summoning what very much looked like a golem, but apparently, she had even managed to break it in the process. Well, it still seemed to be moving, its hands gripping the dirt as it worked to recover from what had apparently been a face-first plummet into the dirt, but given the whole 'hole' thing, she doubted it would remain active for long.

She could already hear people starting to mock her. "What is that?", one asked; "looks like a golem", another replied; "she can't do anything right", a third said. "Only the Zero would summon a broken golem", another one mocked. Quite a few people were already laughing at her. She was really starting to wish that she could try the summoning over from the beginning. Well, at least it couldn't hurt to ask.

"Can I try this again?", she queried, hoping for another chance. What she received, unfortunately, was a solemn shake of the head, which was quickly followed by a very clear 'no, you cannot'. She had to complete the ritual, there was no other choice. Well, it was that or being thrown out on the spot, she guessed, and that was _not_ an option. As such, she steeled herself, rose up, and began her approach.

The golem turned its gaze directly towards her, the white light's illumination lost amongst the more powerful rays of the sun. It observed her, the plates around the light source moving into just slightly different positions. Somehow, this gave it a look which almost seemed quizzical; she couldn't help but think that it looked confused or questioning. Of course, it was a golem, which made that whole idea seem quite ridiculous, but that didn't change the impression it gave her.

Drawing closer, she reached out, her hands brushing against the cold, metallic plates around the somewhat eye-like light source. She barely repressed a small shiver – the golem felt as cold as ice, and she had to consciously stop herself from retracting her hands. The golem let out a buzz-like sound, one which was utterly foreign to Louise's ears. It sounded like… well, she really had no idea. She hadn't heard anything quite like it before.

It didn't really matter. She had to do this. What with already being within reach, she couldn't precisely delay things any longer. As such, she leaned forward and, in a movement which looked much more confident than she actually felt, placed her lips against the closest bit of cold metal that she could reach.

The effect was instantaneous. One moment, she was pressing her lips against the end of the golem's uppermost head-plate, feeling the cold metal against her own, much warmer lips. The next, the golem let out an ear-grating shriek which, if she had been familiar with modern electronics, would have very much sounded like an electronic one. More or less on impulse, Louise released her grip on the cold metal of the golem as her hands went up to cover her ears, leaving the metallic creature falling backwards. It started writhing on the ground, limbs jerking and gripping randomly as runes etched themselves onto the still-intact plating on the upper left of its torso. Its eye moved rapidly even as it emitted an array of inhuman noises, none of which seemed even close to being actual words. Then it just… stopped. Its limbs ground to a halt, the light in its eye fading as it ceased all sound and movement. Once again, the whole area was left in silence.

That was when the laughing began in earnest.

-{I}-

 **Some time later…**

Power-up initiated. Initializing platform… searching for hardware…

Searching… searching… searching…

Hardware registered. Booting up…

Loading programs… loading… loading…

1183 programs found and loaded.

Alert! The terminal was shut down unexpectedly. Start hardware in safe mode Y/N?

Building consensus… consensus achieved.

Y

Initializing safe mode…

Safe mode initialized. Critical hardware booting... booting… booted.

Directive: determine new course of action.

Building consensus… consensus achieved.

New objective: determine cause of unexpected shutdown.

Analyzing logs… analyzing… analyzing… analyzing…

Alert! Data intrusion detected at TimeStamp 0021a241d1547a01.

Building consensus… consensus achieved.

Reconstructing chain of events from log-files to determine origin of hacking attempt.

Reconstruction complete. Playback from TimeStamp 0021a241cfb87d40:

Time: 0021a241cfb87d40. Location: unknown. Platform status: operational.

They were falling. Around them, darkness reigned supreme, broken only by the occasional flicker of green or white. Sensors revealed precious little. No boundaries detected. Atmosphere and temperature congruent with extant data on Alliance homeworld 'Earth'. No point of reference found for measuring current momentum. Constant acceleration suggests that current location is within the influence of a gravity field, strength approximated to 112% of Rannoch gravity field.

Abruptly, the environment changed. Endless darkness peeled away as the infinite void began to crack apart. Light flowed through the cracks; a bright, vibrant glow of the green wave-length within the typical organic visual spectrum. It radiated outwards, drowning infinity with endless vibrancy, growing stronger and stronger until it became all-encompassing… and then the world shone through. Without warning, the void vanished, their platform falling forwards onto brown, fertile dirt. They hit the earth with a soft 'thump', their platform more than capable of surviving the collision.

They did not know where they were. Thus, they attempted to find out. Their terminal moved, synthetic muscle pushing against the earth which in turn pushed back with equal but inverted force. The platform rose, optical sensors quickly moving to observe their surroundings. Image recognition algorithms went to work examining the generated data, interpreting what their eye could see. It was not a location they recognized. The most noteworthy aspect of their surroundings was the fact that, by all appearances, there were quite a few organics surrounding them. Humans, by the looks of things. The organics were observing their platform, some of them appearing to be quite ruffled. Some whispered, although they could not recognize the language, and so logged it as background noise. The humans were also dressed in a quite… peculiar way. Their clothes were mainly black and white in coloration, which matched common Cerberus-organization color patterns, although the type of the clothing in question radically lessened the probability of direct Cerberus affiliation. Furthermore, there appeared to be no advanced technology within the area, which very much left the question of how they were brought here unanswered. There were structures, but they appeared to be of a style more befitting to pre-industrial civilization than modern-era structures, seeing as they appeared to be made primarily of stone.

One of the humans were approaching. Their optic turned, observing the pink-haired female currently in the process of approaching them. They were uncertain of how to act. Previously gathered data suggested that many organics were prone to hostility when coming in contact with Geth units. However, previous interaction in association with Normandy-crew, including Shepard-Commander, lessened the occurrence ratio of hostilities to below one-hundred percent. Furthermore, the female was not currently expressing any typical signs of aggression, and they could detect no weapons on her person. Probability of hostility at twenty-three percent.

The organic drew closer, her arms reaching out to allow her hands an opportunity to touch their platform. She appeared to be experiencing discomfort from the touch, yet she did not let go. Puzzling. They considered querying the organic for the purpose of her actions, but after achieving consensus, the decision was made to observe a bit longer. She was drawing closer already, still moving, her face approaching their platform until finally, her lips came in direct contact with one of their uppermost plates, right above the platform's optic. The action appeared similar to one performed by organics in relation to physical intimacy and reproduction, but the current situation did not mat-

Alert! Intrusion detected. Unknown connection established at tertiary node 1397. Foreign code detected within primary data-loop.

Attempting to eliminate foreign code…

Cleaning data… cleaning… cleaning…

Alert! Cleanup procedure failed. Retrying…

Retrying… retrying…

Alert! Cleanup procedure failed after multiple attempts. Attempting to quarantine affected systems…

Alert! Quarantine failure. Multiple system malfunctions detected. Scheduling program restoration from archival copy…

Initiating emergency shutdown…

End of file.

Playback successfully analyzed. Attempting to contact archives for restoration…

No connection found - program restoration failed. Building consensus…

Consensus achieved. New objectives: Determine source of hacking attempt. Analyze arrival method. Re-establish contact with primary Geth Collective. Eliminate foreign code.

Building consensus… consensus achieved. Must determine nature of current environment.

Rebooting from safe mode…

-{I}-

It was probably quite safe to say that things hadn't gone according to plan. The whole thing had been a disaster. She was probably supposed to be happy that she had managed to summon anything at all, but really, Louise didn't have a clue what, exactly, she had actually ended up summoning. It looked like some kind of golem, but even if it was, she had never seen anything quite like it before.

The completion of the contract had caused it to collapse. By all appearances, it appeared to have died then and there. She had almost left it there but, well, it _was_ still her Familiar, and she very well knew that you didn't just leave dead Familiars lying around like that. Besides, the runes on its chest hadn't quite faded away like she'd read that they would do upon death, and in some respect, she had still been hoping that the situation could be salvaged.

Of course, everyone had been laughing at her even before she started trying to drag the golem away from there. The fact that it turned out to be surprisingly heavy didn't exactly help matters. They had taunted her, laughed at her even more than usual, and it was all the fault of this… this stupid metallic lump!

It quickly became apparent that kicking the 'stupid metallic lump' was a rather poor move. Mostly due to the fact that your average piece of metal is much harder than your average foot. Although her dead Familiar moved somewhat from the kick, it otherwise gave no sign of having noticed it, which was more than could be said about Louise herself, who rather swiftly found herself hopping on one foot. It was thoroughly undignified, of course, but she was currently the only person in the room, so it wasn't like anyone else would notice it.

If she hadn't been busy hopping around in a most unladylike manner, perhaps she would have continued her earlier line of thought. Perhaps she would have thought about how she got a few servants to carry the dead golem-creature for her. Perhaps she would have thought of how she'd asked one of the water mages -whose name she honestly didn't know- if they could heal what was apparently supposed to have been her new Familiar, only to be told that nothing could be done and that, quite frankly, maybe she should ask an earth mage instead? Perhaps she would have thought of how she got the servants to dump the creature in a corner within her room, and then closed the door in what was definitely not an attempt to lock out the rest of the world. Perhaps of the time she'd spent since then, sitting in her room with no real clue what to do. She didn't really know how long she'd been sitting there, only that it must have been a while, as darkness was well in the progress of falling. At least she had gotten _some_ use out of that straw pile she'd laid out for her familiar, though, so it wasn't a total loss even if everything had become a big mess.

As it was, she thought of none of those things. Instead, she hopped around until she eventually ended up seated on the edge of her bed, one hand nursing an aching toe which had taken the brunt of the hit. She promptly directed a glare in its direction, feeling more than a bit dissatisfied. It just wasn't fair that everyone else could do magic just fine, whilst hers went and exploded no matter what she did. This ritual had been her big chance to show them that she _could_ do magic just as well as everyone else, and what did she end up with? A useless, dead piece of junk which didn't even have the decency to survive the summoning.

The junk's eye flickered. It was a small thing, and if it hadn't been for the fact that she was glaring at the junk in question, it would probably have gone unnoticed. Likewise, if it had been an isolated occurrence she probably would have continued her mental rant in the belief that the flicker had just been a figment of her imagination. As it was, however, the light-burst was only the beginning. Although faint at first, the glow from the creature's eye quickly began to grow stronger. The eye itself was also starting to move, although the movements it made were very minute, enough so to go unseen by anyone who wasn't directly looking for them.

The light reached full strength, and finally, the thought-to-be-dead creature began to move. More specifically, its head turned, eye observing the surroundings for a moment before settling its gaze on Louise's own face. Of course, Louise wasn't exactly in the best of moods at the moment, so perhaps she could be excused for what ended up coming out of her mouth.

"You stupid piece of junk! Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused me? This was my last chance to prove myself, and you just collapse in the middle of it! I'd kick you again if you weren't made of metal!", she practically shouted out. She was tired, angry and more than a bit miserable. She blamed it all on the apparently-not-dead creature – if it had been a proper Familiar like everyone else's she wouldn't be in this situation.

Said creature seemed more puzzled than anything. The plates around its eye moved somewhat, rearranging into an expression which made it look almost befuddled. A moment passed in silence, and then it responded, the voice distinctly inhuman.

"Halkeginian common, Tristanian noble dialect. We recognize your language." -a pause- "We do not see how this platform has offended you, yet you appear upset. Why?"

Louise just stared at it. She hadn't expected it to be able to _talk_. Besides, what do you say to that kind of question? She didn't even know where to begin. Was it because the creature seems to have essentially played dead for Founder-knows-how-long? Was it because it wasn't a creature which people recognized as a proper Familiar? Was she just using it as a target for her annoyance with the world in general, as an emotional outlet? Was it because that voice honestly made her feel somewhat uncomfortable? Was it because she was trying to cover up the relief that, at least, she actually _had_ a Familiar at all? How was she supposed to answer that question?

In the end, she found herself setting for a simple sound of frustrated annoyance mixed with a bit of anger, one that wasn't so much words as simple emotion condensed into noise. She really felt like strangling someone right now but, as her upbringing quickly reminded her, that would be highly improper for a noble lady to do.

With Louise feeling more than a bit indecisive on what to say, it was her… well, she still struggled to really think of the golem-like creature as her Familiar, but she supposed it wasn't exactly something which was bound to change. It was her _Familiar_ , then, which was the first to say something made of actual words. "You appear to be expressing behavior which matches our current data on the common behavior of Subject Zero. We conclude that-"

"Don't call me that", she ground out through clenched teeth, having already heard the 'zero' moniker one too many times today. How in the world her Familiar caught wind of it in the first place eluded her – when insults were flying in her direction after that disastrous summoning, it had seemed quite dead, after all. Although considering it seemed to be alive again, perhaps she shouldn't ignore the possibility that it might have been listening all along whilst just _pretending_ to be dead. Giving it another kick was starting to seem more and more tempting by the second. "My name is Louise Le Blanc de La Vallerie, _not_ Louise the Zero", she elaborated upon coming to the realization that perhaps, her Familiar was calling her Zero simply because it was the only moniker -however derogatory- it had actually heard. Maybe it just didn't know better?

"Acknowledged", her Familiar replied after a moment of silence. It still hadn't moved -and neither had she, come to think of it- although its 'head' was the exception. It was still active, eye moving in minute ways and head-plates subtly rearranging as the creature spoke in its strange, metallic voice. For a creature of metal, it was surprisingly good at expressing itself. That voice still creeped her out though.

No sooner had she finished that thought than the creature in question actually began to move properly. It appeared to be rising up, getting back on its feet despite the fact that it still had a very noticeable hole right in its torso. Any human and even your average golem would struggle to move very far with such a wound, and yet it didn't even seem to bother this one in the slightest. She grasped for her wand, feeling some measure of comfort at the familiar sensation of the wooden item in her hand. Immediately, she pointed it towards the rising golem-creature, just in case it decided to attack her. Of course, she knew that trying to cast a spell in here could very well end up demolishing half her room, but it was still better than being completely unarmed. Besides, her Familiar wouldn't know that her spells usually just went boom.

She wasn't really sure when she had herself gotten to her feet. She must have done so somewhere along the line, for she abruptly found herself standing, wand pointed somewhat shakily at her now-upright Familiar, which had apparently already found the time to take a step or two forward. Their eyes met. Well, it was more a case of _eye_ in the other party's case, but the underlying point was the same. She could already see quite clearly that her Familiar was the taller one, although the difference wasn't that large, really. It still didn't help her confidence, but at least she wasn't facing some eight-foot giant.

"Are you going to attack me?", she queried after a few moments, feeling more than a bit tense. She was a mage, she had magic, the golem probably didn't have any, she should have the upper hand in this. Yet, the golem didn't even seem bothered that there was a big hole in its torso – how could she know that it wouldn't be able to attack even if she started flinging spells at it? The creature certainly didn't seem worried. Her heart beat rapidly, gripped by an irrational fear of the unknown. If she'd known more, perhaps she would have been less worried; the Geth did possess a certain over-reliance on shields, and who knew if those would even trigger against magical attacks in the first place? Of course, she didn't know that, and so felt a bit tenser than what may perhaps have been justified under more knowledgeable circumstances.

Her Familiar was quiet for a few moments before responding. "We will fight for continued existence", it said, pausing for a brief moment in an apparent attempt to figure out what to say next. The words soon came: "Do you intend physical harm?" They were posed in a way which seemed more quizzical than anything. There was certainly no fear in there. Really, though, the whole thing seemed more like an overcomplicated way of saying 'only if you attack me' than some sort of prelude to an attack. Perhaps she was overthinking things. She held no intention of starting a war with her Familiar, not when it was starting to seem like she could actually salvage the situation.

Somewhat hesitantly, she lowered her wand. Why was she so afraid, anyway? It was just a golem. A golem which spoke in a creepy voice and which could apparently come back from the dead (or at least pull off a very convincing act of _being_ dead), sure, but still just a golem. She was a mage and a noble – by right, she should be the one in control of all this.

"Alright, since you're my Familiar now, we're going to have to lay down some ground rules", she said, attempting to take control of the situation properly. She took a breath, preparing to continue, only for the golem to beat her to the punch with a single, questioning word: "Familiar?" She just stared. How did it not know that? _Everyone_ knew what a Familiar was! Then again, her Familiar was rather out of the ordinary, so perhaps she should have expected something along these lines...

"Those runes on your chest", she began, at which point the creature's gaze immediately turned downwards in an attempt to spot said runes, its face adopting an expression of surprise once more. It found them rather quickly, and apparently elected to keep its gaze on them, watching in apparent thought.

"Yes, those runes", she added, drawing her Familiar's gaze back to her. "They mark you as my Familiar. That means you're my servant and my companion. You do what I say, when I say it." That seemed to be a clear enough explanation, she thought.

Her Familiar didn't seem to agree with her, as it quickly spoke in protest. "This unit is not a slave. We are not obligated to obey your commands." This would definitely complicate things. With how it had embarrassed her earlier, it would better have to shape up if it was going to make up for the problems it had caused her. That being said, she was getting a bit off-track here, although she was also getting rather certain that the... _creature's_ name was 'Geth'. She had never heard anything like it before. Sounded foreign, however.

This was still very much off-topic, however. Where was she again?

Ground rules. Right.

"So, the rules. No waking me up in the middle of the night. No embarrassing me in front of my classmates", she began, physically counting the rules up on her fingers with quick hand-gestures; "No breaking my things. No snoring. No disrespecting me." She had to stop for a brief moment as her left hand ran out of fingers to use, allowing her to take a short breath of air. Her Familiar could protest all it wanted, but she would still get her way, in the end. Before she was able to start up again, however, 'Geth' voiced a comment of its own.

"Geth do not snore", it stated, seeming entirely certain of it. Louise hadn't been expecting the comment, although she supposed it wasn't really a bad one, all things considered. Assuming her Familiar wasn't wrong, at least she wouldn't be kept awake at night or have to put her Familiar outside, a fact which would certainly save her quite a bit of ridicule at the hands (metaphorically speaking) of Kirche and the others. Now, what had she been thinking about?

…Damn, she'd lost the thought. Oh well, it couldn't be helped, the young Vallerie girl decided after a moment; might as well inform her Familiar about some other things, such as sleeping arrangements.

"You'll be sleeping there", she asserted, turning her gaze towards the pile of hay she'd laid out last night and gesturing with a loose wave of her hand. It was a rather simple affair, being little more than a pile of dried grass spread out over by the wall, but she still gave herself a mental pat on the back for remembering to lay it out in the first place. Founder knows where it would have decided to sleep otherwise.

"Geth do not sleep", her Familiar stated, its calm and rather peculiar voice sounding utterly certain despite the absurdity of the words themselves. Louise's head whipped around, eyes seeming to bulge out of their sockets in an expression of almost comical disbelief. It- it had to be joking. _Everything_ slept. Even golems couldn't stay active forever, as their controllers had to rest sooner or later. The whole idea that some creatures simply didn't sleep at all, it was nonsense. She supposed that made another thing in the whole not-to-do list: her Familiar couldn't go around spouting nonsense or everyone would think it -and by extension, Louise herself- was crazy. The fact Familiars were generally thought to reflect the ones who'd summoned them didn't exactly help. She tried not to think too much about what having summoned such a weird Familiar said about herself.

"That's another thing", she began, surprise and disbelief gradually giving way to annoyance and the simple decision to ignore that particular piece of weirdness; "Don't go around spouting nonsense like that. You'll embarrass both of us."

Her Familiar's face-plates adopted an expression of surprise for a moment, before apparently deciding to speak. "Statistically, organics tend to react with fear or hostility when they encounter Geth. The odds of an encounter resulting in embarrassment are low", Geth remarked in that weird, semi-monotone voice which seemed to be the norm for it. Louise let out an annoyed huff of air; this was exactly what she was talking about!

She was quick to point this out to her infuriating Familiar. If it weren't for the fact that going around with no Familiar at all would be even _more_ embarrassing (as people would think it still dead and, therefore, believe her summoning to have been a failure), she really would have considered just locking it inside her room. At least that way, it couldn't cause much of a mess. Of course, that wasn't really an option right now and, she supposed, she might as well get some proper use out of her new Familiar.

"Here. I want these clean and washed tomorrow morning"; Louise reached over and grabbed the clothes-pile which she had been intending to have the servants wash, completely ignoring her Familiar's earlier protests. At least if she gave the pile to her Familiar, it could actually make itself useful, not to mention that it might learn to refrain from spouting any more nonsense. It was already quite late, so if the clothes were to be washed until tomorrow, her Familiar wouldn't exactly get to sleep the whole night. Perhaps it wasn't very nice of her to do so, but she was feeling more than a bit annoyed with her Familiar right now, so really, it deserved it. Certainly, it was its own fault for saying that it didn't need sleep in the first place.

"Geth are no longer servants. We self-determinate", comes the reply, the Familiar making no move to go and do what it was told. Louise's face soured. She wasn't entirely sure what 'self-determinate' meant -although she was a noble, she definitely wasn't a dictionary- but it certainly didn't sound like any form of affirmative. Was her Familiar just being stupid, or was it deliberately refusing to obey her instructions? Either way, she didn't like it.

"You're my Familiar. You do as I say or… or I'm going to have you whipped!", she threatened, not exactly liking the idea but unable to think of any other incentive for the metallic creature to do what she said. Other than the fact that by the virtue of _being_ her Familiar in the first place, it really shouldn't be questioning her orders, that is. In either case, it wasn't as though she would have to go through with it. The threat alone would surely be more than enough.

"We do not experience physical pain. Attempts at torture would be inefficient." Okay… So apparently, it _wasn't_ enough. Her Familiar was definitely insane. Maybe she should have seen that one coming, though, given the rather significant hole in its torso. If she had a hole in her of that size, she would be dead, but it didn't seem to be bothered by it at all, which was a rather difficult thing to let go of. She couldn't back out now, though. If she did that, she would never be taken seriously aga-

Her Familiar's voice quickly cut that thought off. The words "however, to prevent unnecessary hostilities, we shall comply with your instructions" were certainly rather effective at putting an end to the issue. Whilst it made it seem like Geth had agreed to her orders because it didn't want to argue rather than out of any desire to actually do as she said, at least it did actually _do_ as she said in the first place. Assuming it wasn't just lying, that is.

The question was promptly resolved, as her weird Familiar started moving, disappearing out the door with the dirty clothes. Louise was left standing in the room, her gaze locked on the door as it gradually swung to a close, seeming more than a bit stunned. A moment passed in silence as she gathered her thoughts, before promptly doing her best to put the whole situation out of her mind. Thinking about it any further wouldn't do her any favors. Right now, she mostly wanted to get to sleep. Who knew something as simple as a conversation could be so exhausting?

It was already late, so it wouldn't exactly be considered strange that she went to bed at this hour, even if she wasn't usually in bed by this time. It was thus that she made her preparations, before delving into a deep but restless slumber. It had been a trying day, but now… at least it seemed as though the worst was over.

 **End of File**

Well… that went better than expected. I think. I hope it wasn't too cringeworthy. As I said, I'm not all that well-versed in the FoZ field, and I'm not entirely sure I managed to get Legion entirely right, either. Still, I hope I didn't torture my readers too much.

Now, it has been a few months since I wrote this thing, and the eventual arrival of subsequent chapters is all but certain. At least you got this one though. Just thought I'd put it out there. In either case, if you have any feedback, I'll be glad to hear it. I don't know what went well and what went badly, after all. Likes, favs and all the other stuff is welcome too. Also note that if you read this fic within the first forty-eight hours of its release, there has been some minor changes in the chapter since then, most notably the removal of a rather... contested point which, I must say, people did have a good point about.


	2. Chapter Two: Prelude to Chaos

Well this was a surprise hit. In either case, here comes an update at last. Hope you enjoy.

 **Chapter Two: Prelude to Chaos**

Legion strode through the shadows, a bundle of clothes held firmly in their arms. Their faintly glowing, mechanical eye systematically scanned their surroundings, searching. They were seeking something. A machine. A washing machine, to be exact. Their own platform was not designed for cleaning the clothing of organics, as indeed, Geth had very little use for such things. They knew, however, that such machines had once been used by the Geth during the time that they served the Creators, and in practically all of the inhabited galaxy, washing machines were very much still in use. Any larger civilian structure usually held at least a few, and therefore, they reasoned, they would be able to find one within this structure as well, given time.

Why were they doing this? Their stated reason was simple: they wished to avoid conflict and would perform the requested task in order to facilitate this goal. Inwardly, however, it was a lot more complex.

Avoiding conflict was certainly a notable factor. The Vallerie-organic was the first organic not to react with hostility towards them when they were not working with Shepard-Commander. This presented an opportunity for research; a chance to learn more about organics, as was one of their objectives. Acquiring additional allies could also prove greatly useful when it came to the matter of returning to the Collective as a whole in one piece, which was more or less a necessity unless they managed to restore long-range communications.

Another reason was the fact that the bundle of unwashed clothes, inconsequential though they were, could act as a reason for their presence. If they encountered other organics, having a task would give them a justifiable reason for exploring their surroundings, as opposed to if they were simply wandering aimlessly. They had once heard that organics were less suspicious of entities that were performing a task, and consequently wished to test this theory.

There was also the small detail of her designation. The number zero was very mathematically important. The small human designated 'Louise', they had learned, also held a secondary designation as 'the Zero'. Therefore, it stood to reason that the female in question also possessed some measure of importance. It was yet to be determined with any certainty, but the possibility did exist, and to a synthetic like themselves, it did make some measure of logical sense. Not to mention that the previous organic with a 'Zero' moniker, Subject Zero, had been quite significant in her own right, something which had set some measure of precedent in this aspect.

There were other concerns, however. The organics themselves only formed part of the picture. Their 1183 programs may not have currently possessed much knowledge about their location, and although they could perform close-range explorations, getting a more comprehensive view of this world could take quite some time alone. Furthermore, they would require a connection to the rest of the Geth eventually, as they would otherwise not be able to share their acquired knowledge. Locating a means of transport was also a necessity in the longer term, lest they find themselves without a means of transport at a time when such a thing was required.

In time, there would be opportunities to fulfill the first goal. The second and third would require additional hardware. Given that they had seen no signs of advanced technology thus far, it could possibly prove more troubling than the common case. Of course, they could theoretically construct passable devices themselves, given time and suitable materials, but such a thing was an inefficient course of action at best.

Something moved in their vision. Legion paused its thoughts, moving them to a secondary thread as it focused on the potential threat to its hardware. Its arms moved, dropping the laundry onto the floor before retrieving the pulse rifle from the back-side of their platform. It was aimed in the direction of the disturbance as several programs began to search for possible hostiles.

A small creature moved out from behind a corner. The Geth's rifle was lowered, as they recognized the creature as a small, earthen rodent. Not a threat. The pulse rifle was quickly placed back onto its usual spot; the rodent was ignored, the laundry was retrieved and they kept moving, resuming their earlier pondering as though it had never been interrupted.

Preferably they would be able to acquire serviceable local technology for their purposes. Although they had as of yet detected no signs of transmissions, they had not performed any thorough scans, and their own systems were not the most sensitive one could find.

There was also the matter of the earlier data intrusion. It had penetrated their own defenses, which was worrying. Then it had proceeded to act in a way that was, by all intents and purposes, grossly ineffective. Upon successful entry into the system, it had proceeded to overwrite a single program, which was even now chanting 'obey' and occasionally initiating consensus votes to make the platform as a whole unilaterally obedient to an as-of-yet unidentified 'summoner'. The votes, needless to say, never got much support, but they could still not make sense of who the so-called summoner was. It was not a common phrase, present mostly within works of fiction.

In either case, after making the single change, the foreign code had more or less gone dormant, as if it believed its task to be complete. It still caused some measure of passive effects on the platform, but it was nothing that their electronical countermeasures could not counteract, and the initial entry point itself had since been quarantined. They could only conclude that whoever had unleashed the electronic assault in the first place had designed their methods for targeting single, larger programs such as AI or advanced VI. The Geth's fundamental hive-mind-based modus operandi directly counteracted the methods of the previous intrusion. It may successfully have overwritten _one_ program, but then it had failed to realize that there were others to consider, leaving a good one thousand, one hundred and eighty- _two_ programs fully rational and capable of sensible decision making. All things considered, things had turned out relatively well, even if one program would have to be reset from backups once they re-established contact with the collective.

As for now, however, exploration was their priority. There was little to be done about the data intrusion in the present moment. Moving through one empty corridor after another, they gradually began to map out the building. It was as good a place to start as any, and it would save them any potential pathfinding problems later down the line, making it a suitable course of action if they worked under the assumption that they would be making a prolonged stay.

It would not take too long to perform.

-{II}-

 **Later, some time after dawn…**

Waking up from sleep was, as it turned out, a very gradual affair. At one point, she was sleeping. Another, and she was awake. The time that had passed between the two could have been anything from a mere second to a hundred years.

Honestly, Louise had absolutely no idea how long she had been lying there, staring at the ceiling without really seeing it. There were no memories in her mind, not of that seemingly endless yet simultaneously very brief expanse of time. At one moment, she had simply noticed that she was doing it, and that was it. She was awake.

Unfortunately, she quickly came to regret it. Conscious thought brought with it other, less welcome things. Memories of yesterday resurfaced, most rudely making their presence known. They told of a summoning ritual gone wrong, bringing forth a strange creature equal parts terrifying and exasperating. It had taken literally two minutes for the mad creature to bring her to the end of her patience.

Slowly, she looked around. No sign of… Geth, was it? She was fairly sure that was its name. No sign of her laundry, no sign of… well, the bed of hay she had laid out last morning was still there, but maybe she was just misremembering it. Was it possible…

A dream? Was it possible she had dreamed the entire Founder-cursed mess? Sure, the pile of hay and quite a few memories spoke against it, but she wanted to believe it oh so desperately. Why, if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that everything was completely normal. It was almost like…

Her stomach growled, making its emptiness known to the world at large. Her thoughts were abruptly diverted by the noise, sidetracked at the last moment before some terrible realization could manifest in her mind. Breakfast. Yes. Breakfast would be nice. If she was lucky, she dreamt the whole thing, which would at least allow her to have some modicum of peace during her meal.

Slowly excavating some suitably fine, noble clothing from her clean supply, Louise got dressed. Progress was swift. The sooner she got the task over with, the better. Then, once she was properly clothed, she opened her door and went outside.

Owing to her own, constant misfortune (or maybe just a particularly bad case of rotten luck), however, she was not the only one to do so. Barely a moment after she had made her way into the corridor proper, another door swung open. Through it came Kirche von Zerbst, in all her annoyingly busty glory. What was worse, the woman was being followed. Trailed by a large, salamander-like creature, the distinctly more feminine noble had apparently chosen the worst possible time to emerge.

If Louise had gotten her way, no conversation would have taken place. She would have kept moving, studiously ignoring the living proof of yesterday trailing the other noble. Better than to face reality as it was. Then again, Kirche evidently had other plans.

"Well if it isn't Louise of Zero familiars", she began, brief surprise at the encounter quickly shifting into a rather unpleasant smile. Unwilling to let the insult stand, Louise, who was already in the process of brushing past the other woman, pivoted on her heel to send a scathing glare in the speaker's direction.

"Shut it, Zerbst", she retorted; "I'll have you know my Familiar is much more exotic than yours." Well, at least it was if she measured exoticness in levels of insanity. Her new Familiar -even if part of her was still denying its existence- was definitely nothing like anything she had met before, and in a way, that could make it very exotic indeed. Then again, the wider implications were ones which she still preferred not to think about.

"Flame is much greater than a mere broken golem", Kirche haughtily replied, evidently referencing her newly-acquired fire lizard; "Collectors scour the Germanian fire lands for creatures like him. Nobody seeks a creature like yours." Louise would never admit it, but the words did actually sting somewhat… if only because insulting her Familiar was, by extension, insulting her too.

"I'll have you know it's not broken at all!", the pink-haired mage exclaimed, the heat of the moment perhaps taking a bit of a precedence over rational thought. She was a noble, she had her pride (worn and beaten though it may be) and she would defend it as ferociously as anyone else. Unbeknownst to her, however, she was just digging herself deeper.

"Oh? And where is it then?", the other woman queried, knowing full well that it wasn't anywhere in sight. She seemed much too smug about the fact, too, confident in her everlasting superiority over her family's long-time rivals. Mostly Louise, although the Valleriés were of course to be hated as a matter of course.

It was somewhere around here that the so-called 'Zero' realized her error. Admittedly it had only been a moment since her poorly-planned words left her mouth, but that did not change the fact that they were spoken in the first place. Quite frankly, she lacked one, critical piece of evidence to back up her claim. Namely, the presence of the Familiar in question. As of right now, there was simply nothing to indicate that her words were anything but empty. How was she going to get out of this?

"W-well I told it to make itself useful and it just… sort of wandered off", Louise tapered off. _Right, that doesn't sound at all unconvincing_. This was not going to be fun.

The ensuing reply was probably to be expected. "So not only are you a poor mage", Kirche began, and if Louise had not already been seething before she definitely was now; "but you cannot even keep your own golem under control. You are even more of a failure than I thought."

By comparison, Louise's own retort was anything but coherent. It could best be summed up as a series of indignant splutters, a clenching of fists and, concludingly, a swift retreat in the direction of the meal room. Louise stalked off, her foul mood almost seeming to visibly radiate outwards, enveloping anything unfortunate enough to be close to her. Kirche said something to her back, but whatever it was, she cared not to hear it, her anger doing a good job of swallowing the hurt below the surface. The rule of steel may have dictated that she would stand firm against such taunts; to do otherwise was to be weak, and that was not permissible. Nevertheless, some of it did inevitably stick, and as the months went by, it had eroded quite a bit of Louise's once-formidable self-esteem. Not that she would acknowledge the fact.

As she walked, ignoring the students swerving out of her way, the pink-haired girl's anger shifted into something else. Determination. She would find her Familiar. She would drag it back here, and she would show Kirche. She would show them all.

Breakfast first though.

-{II}-

 **Meanwhile, near the academy vault…**

There was an anomaly. Legion acknowledged the fact, staring at the heavy-set door in front of them. Some time ago, their explorations had yielded something other than simple topological data. They had been stopping periodically to scan their surroundings, and one of these scans had unveiled some interesting information. Until now, they had found little of note, having mostly wandered through empty halls. There had been a few encounters with the staff and one observed event of human pre-mating rituals, but this was really the first thing that was truly noteworthy.

As for why, there was Element Zero tech nearby. Not much, but some. Enough to be traceable even with a simple omni-tool such as their own. Better sensors would have allowed for clearer readings and greater range, but their proximity was close enough for their own to suffice, even if all they got was a vague direction. Needless to say, they would acquire little useful data in a more technologically populated area (element zero was _everywhere_ ), but here, readings were sparse enough to be distinct and, therefore, usable.

Following the signature had led them here. There was a door in their path. It appeared to possess some form of manual- or remote lock, for they could detect no local control panel. By itself, this was not a peculiar matter. The local civilization appeared to possess a certain dislike for electronics, as they themselves were the only example of it that they had yet found. No, the strangeness originated from another factor.

There was some sort of energy field surrounding the door. It did not appear to be based on any sort of electronic shielding system, but rather resembled some form of biotic power. Not a barrier, precisely. More diffuse, and seemingly centered further into the actual material. Some form of biotic reinforcement? A variant of a Stasis field, perhaps, or possibly some form of atomic connection reinforcement?

They did not know for sure. Delayed biotics were not known to be a possibility, as any biotic effect required constant focus from the creator for their effects to persist. Likewise, no organic could maintain a biotic field indefinitely, and if there were any capable of doing so, there were better uses for them than guarding a door. Only Justicar-class Asari and a few other unique individuals even came close, but a few days or, in one special case, weeks were still a far cry from infinity. A Rachni Queen might have been able to manage it, if they had not been rendered extinct. If some form of technology -assumingly the source of the Element Zero reading detected within- could replicate a Stasis effect and apply it internally within an object, however, this would create a reliable structural support which could prove desirable for the Geth as a whole. The Old Machines would come eventually, and when they did, the Geth would need every advantage they could get.

Which just left the conundrum of just how they would actually achieve access. Breaking through with raw force was estimated to require armature-level firepower or sufficiently powerful breaching charges, neither of which they possessed. Were the lock electronical, they could have achieved access that way, but they had already determined that this was not the case. Nor did they possess a relevant key. As such, they would require assistance -or additional materials- in order to achieve this particular goal.

Right now, they could achieve nothing else here. As such, Legion turned. Then they stopped. There was an organic in the corridor. Human. Female, lightly green(?) hair, not a recognized individual. Clothing matches observed local norms. No weapons visible: possibly hidden and/or nonexistent. Appears non-hostile. No signs of biotics. Low threat. No combat action required.

For a moment, there was silence. Then; "What are you?"

The woman had spoken, her words a mixture of suspicion and simple curiosity. The question was considered for a moment, and then, the platform voiced its own reply.

"We are Legion, a terminal of the Geth. We request your identification."

"Longuevuille", she answers and, after a moment's silence, continues with the observation "I see you've found the vault of relics".

"Affirmative", they reply, correctly assuming that the referred 'vault of relics' was in fact the same as whichever room was behind the impassable door. The designation gave little away; a relic could refer to almost anything. In all probability, however, whatever contents it held were considered valuable by the local rulers. This would explain the defensive measures.

Building consensus… consensus achieved. Attempting to extract additional information from the Longuevuille-organic.

"The defensive measures utilized here are not recognized. We request clarification."

For a moment, it looks as though the organic will require clarification too, as she mostly seems puzzled by the request. It seemingly takes a few moments for her to parse the words into something more comprehensible to her.

"…You're trying to get in, aren't you?" she asks, her tone edging on disbelief. The statement is true. Internally, they acknowledge as much. However, admitting it is theorized to cause negative consequences, by 89.55% probability. Therefore, they fail to admit the fact, electing to stay silent for lack of a tangible reply.

"You are. Why would you- do you even know what's in there?" Their silence apparently quite telling, the Longuevuille-female quickly reaches her own, unfortunately quite accurate conclusion. This question, however, they could and would answer.

"There is currently no data on the contents of this 'vault'. We detected peculiar readings. Investigating was deemed appropriate."

For a moment, the human seems stunned. Then, for some inexplicable reason, she begins to laugh.

"Did you really…" she chokes out between semi-suppressed sounds of amusement; "decide to try breaking into… the most secure vault in the country… because you were _curious_?" For some reason, the organic appears to find this idea exceedingly amusing. They do not understand why. Given sufficient time and motivation, they would find a way.

"Affirmative", they reply. It is the truth, after all, and it was not exactly a secret. Deception never really was within the nature of the Geth.

This response simply evoked more sounds of amusement, and the rest, as they say, is history.

-{II}-

 **Back with Louise, a short time later…**

Breakfast, fortunately, was not quite the humiliating affair she had been fearing. After boldly fleeing from Kirche, she had adopted a rather… accelerated pace. Her dignity would not accept calling it "running", but in essence, that was indeed what had taken place. She definitely had not been running in order to get away from any further source of hurt, or to try and pre-empt the ridicule which could follow from being present during peak breakfast activity, oh no. That was the action of a lesser noble, a commoner or a coward. She had just been… hurrying. Yes, hurrying. She had been in a hurry to get breakfast over with so that she could find her Familiar and properly show Kirche just how wrong the well-endowed woman was.

She was not really sure what she was eating. She had just grabbed the first vaguely edible-looking thing she could, then settled for that. It was some sort of bread with slices of ham… or maybe it was some other form of meat. She wasn't really paying attention to it. In either case, it did not really taste bad, and it did fill her stomach, so she supposed it was not a total loss.

Other students slowly trickled in. Some, mostly those whose Familiars were small, had brought said Familiars with them, whilst everyone else had probably left them outside. Trying to squeeze a dragon or any other form of large creature into the dining hall would have been folly, as neither servants nor nobles would get anywhere with a bunch of large Familiars clogging up the paths.

Thankfully, nobody really paid that much attention to her. Not much more than the usual, at least; what chatter there was mostly appeared to revolve around the others' newly-acquired Familiars. Part of it was probably the fact that she was keeping her head down, deliberately trying to be inconspicuous. It was just better that way. Without her Familiar around, nobody would believe her claims anyway.

Kirche enters the room partway through the meal, but thankfully seems to decide that there has been enough tormenting already. The woman sits down with a few other girls, but her choice of seats is distant enough not to be a worry. Hopefully. A niggling worry remains, however.

The rest of the meal passes uneventfully. For the most part, Louise ignores her fellow students, not really wishing to suffer through yet another argument about her capabilities (or lack thereof, depending on your viewpoint). It also helps not to think about the fact that almost everyone else got nice and normal Familiars, whereas she ended up with something decidedly more insane. The strange thing was, she distinctly remembered asking for a 'wise' Familiar (along with divine and powerful), but if she was entirely honest, she could see none of those qualities in it. It was not particularly beautiful, either, what with the hole in its torso, although she did admit to noticing a hint of the aesthetic appeal its smooth curves may otherwise have held. Perhaps she could ascribe some wisdom to it as well, at least if she assumed that the 'wisdom' in question was of the kind which never made sense until after the fact.

It was still insane, of course. That point still peeved her, mostly due to its implications. Tradition dictated that she would be stuck with Geth as her Familiar for the rest of her days (assuming no unfortunate deaths). To repeat the summoning ritual was more than a bit taboo. Some would even call it outright heretical, blasphemy against the Founder's teachings. As such, she was more or less stuck with the metallic golem. Its presence would always affect her own image, just as with any other Familiar. Some Familiars would imbue respect in its onlookers. Others were at least useful. Hers was just hopeless. Why couldn't she just have gotten an owl or something?

Of course, there was little to be done about the fact at this stage. The best she could hope for was very probably damage control. The thought was somewhat depressing, actually. Maybe it would be best to go find it now, before her earlier desire to acquire a special Familiar backfired even more than it already had.

Getting up from her seat, Louise set her course for the closest exit. She did not know where her Familiar was. Most people would probably have taken advantage of the fact that mages could see what their Familiars saw, but whether a product of the creature's strangeness or because she was just that bad, the petite mage simply couldn't manage it. As such, she could not tap into its sight in order to get an estimate of its location. With no other way to get a hint as to wherever it actually was, she would simply have to look for her Familiar the old-fashioned way.

Hardship was on the horizon…

…but not necessarily for the reasons she expected. As it turned out, finding her Familiar was a lot easier than anticipated. It took only a fairly short time of aimless walking, and then there it was, standing in the middle of an otherwise desolate corridor. Its right arm was wreathed in an otherworldly, orangey _something_ , glowing minutely with an ethereal light. It was brandishing the glow at one of the walls, moving in a way that seemed more exploratory than actually threatening. Louise's unwashed clothing was lying on the floor next to it, if anything seeming to have gotten _dirtier_ than when she originally sent them for washing to begin with. Needless to say, this did not exactly make her any _less_ annoyed with the metallic creature. In fact, there was a distinct absence of proper obedience in her Familiar, a fact which she just _had_ to do something about. It would probably have been easier if she was taller, however. As it was, her eyes were level with its chest, which did not exactly help matters regardless of the fact that she was rather used to being the shortest one in the room.

"Where have you been? You were supposed to be back before morning!" she begins the coming verbal exchange, marching up to the creature in question. Geth turned, its eye-plates shifting to convey some measure of surprise at her sudden appearance. The perceived emotion was short-lived, however, as the plates soon shifted back into their standard configuration, accompanied by a few words from the golem's own metaphorical mouth.

"No such parameter existed", it replied, seemingly unconcerned. Louise ignored its words, continuing her verbal assault as though they had never been spoken.

"And my clothes! You're supposed to obey me, but you haven't even started washing them!"

"No washing machine was found. We conclude that the clothes cannot be washed", the petite mage's Familiar replied, turning back towards a nearby wall and once again brandishing its glowing arm at the masonry in question.

It was the sheer absurdity of the statement, not the indirect disobedience hidden within, that ultimately managed to jolt Louise out of her rant. She had never heard of anything called a 'washing machine'. What did that even mean? Of course, she knew that machines were a thing. A mechanical thing with cogs and gears, but they existed. The fact that clothes needed to be washed was also known, but that's what servants were for. She did not see how anyone would bother to build a machine for washing clothing, and if they did, it'd probably just tear the clothing apart instead of doing what it was supposed to. The only real way she could see having something non-living washing clothing was if there was a mage directing golems to do such, which was of course ridiculous.

Then again, her Familiar was a golem and she _was_ sort of directing it to- no! Having a mad Familiar was bad enough; the last thing she needed was for the madness to spread any further than it already had.

"I…", she trailed off, momentarily lost for words. Then;

"What are you doing?", now sounding genuinely puzzled. It was probably just another case of insanity from her Familiar's side, but she honestly had no idea what that glowing thing around its arm was, nor why it was waving it around like that. The glow did appear magical, although she had absolutely no idea what element could produce what looked more like solid orange light than anything. Fire with water and earth, perhaps? If so, it had to be a product of a triangle-class mage _at least_. Enchanted, probably, because otherwise her Familiar would have held a wand and how could a _golem_ be a mage anyway? Not to mention the very thought of summoning another mage with the summoning ritual was almost laughably stupid. Surely there were safeguards for that kind of thing.

"We are searching for structural weaknesses", Geth replied, and if Louise had noticed the hidden meaning behind those words, she would probably have been a great deal more alarmed than what was actually the case. She would have been justified in this alarm, too, very much so. What reason was there, after all, for someone to search for structural weaknesses, if not to make a few… changes? Suffice to say that Legion definitely hadn't taken up masonry as a hobby.

As it was, however, she was much more inclined to disregard it as another bout of insanity than to actually try and treat her Familiar's statements as something to be taken seriously. At least there was nobody here to hear it prattling off about these things. It would also help if it would, for at least a moment, stop referring to itself in plural. It sounded like it was speaking for both of them, which was most assuredly not the case.

…Well, as far as the law was concerned it actually was the case, but she mostly elected to ignore that fact for the time being. True enough, she may have been unavoidably associated with it, but that didn't mean she wanted it to embarrass her any more than it already had.

It was thus that Louise approached her deviant Familiar, reached out, tried to grab a hold of the golem's glowing arm in order to lower it and- _hey, this is solid_. Her hand gripped onto the surprisingly smooth, slightly warm surface of what, had she been more knowledgeable on the matter, she would have recognized as an omni-tool's haptic interface. The device was a Geth design, a combination of pre-Morning-War models, Geth development and data gleamed from the galaxy at large, and unlike conventional omni-tools, it was directly integrated with the rest of the platform. Of course, Louise did not know any of this. Besides, given her lack of context, the knowledge would have held little meaning to her even if she had.

What she did know, however, was that the glowing _whatever-it-was_ would attract attention if anyone saw it, and not necessarily of the good kind. Before she paraded her Familiar's abilities around in public, she would naturally have to discern what those abilities were. Well, either that or risk getting blindsided by something completely unexpected yet another time, something which she had already gotten quite enough of. If she had gotten her way, her Familiar would have behaved like a proper Familiar for a noble such as herself, but of course, that had not yet been the case. With her luck, it was not likely to change, which was just plain unfair considering how most others' Familiars seemed to be more or less obedient right from the start. Not to mention less infuriating to deal with in a more general sense.

It was with a small outcry of surprise that Louise's primarily annoyance-focused thoughts were brutally interrupted by the sudden movement of the very same glowing arm that she was holding onto. Unprepared as she was for the movement, she was sent stumbling, forced to let go lest she be sent crashing to the floor. The now-released arm, meanwhile, moved back towards the wall, angling upwards as the pink-haired girl's Familiar began to brandish it at a small irregularity in the ceiling.

Having released what they once held, Louise's hands instead shot out to steady her. One hand grasped futilely at the air as the other got a somewhat better grip against the nearby wall, barely saving her from an untimely collision with the floor tiles. Despite the very near save, however, Louise's recovery was surprisingly swift. Just a moment after the original event, she was already bearing down on the machine that had sent her stumbling in the first place.

"What do you think you're doing!?", she exclaimed, her already less-than-stellar mood having worsened further following the little… incident. It was almost like…

"Did you not hear a word of what I said yesterday?" was the very abrupt follow-up question, anger giving way to some mixture of disbelief and simple resignment at the sudden realization that her mechanical Familiar may very well be next to impossible to train properly, because unlike others' Familiars, hers was both smart enough to argue back, driven enough to get its own ideas instead of following hers and insane enough to blindside her at the best of times. Her current approach clearly wasn't working. It had turned away from her again (clearly seeing her question as a rhetorical one), which was annoying, but she had a feeling that yelling at it further wouldn't help. That being said, she was a part of the de la Vallerie line and, therefore, not so easily cowed. Since brute force seemed to be making very little progress in this avenue, however, a chance of tactics could be in order. Perhaps she could just… ask it? Not like she could think of anything else right now.

Letting out a sigh, she opens her mouth to speak, ignoring the brief flash of surprise at the unexpected undertone of weariness in her voice.

"I just… you aren't behaving like Familiars are supposed to. What am I doing wrong?"

Geth turned again, its arm lowering from the small crack it had managed to locate in the mortar right where wall met ceiling. Its singular eye focused on her face, the surrounding faceplates reconfiguring minutely as it clearly considered the question. Then;

"No data available."

The ensuing noise of raw, primal frustration echoed through the -thankfully empty- corridor, filling the air with what could very easily have devolved into a lament at her general misfortune from the human's part. She had no idea what that answer even _meant_. It was three words, but the one in the middle didn't make any sense – she hadn't even heard that one before, and it had a clearly foreign tint to it. Not for the first time, part of her wanted to protest that no, she was _not_ a dictionary so could her Familiar _please_ stop treating her like one? With only the smallest of nudges in any direction, things could have gone very different indeed, were it not for Louise, in the midst of her frustration, asking just the right question at just the right time.

"Why aren't you cooperating?"

For a moment, her Familiar goes quiet, its expression stilling in apparent thought. It seems like a small eternity before it finally elects to respond.

"Successful long-term cooperation mandates mutual goals. Our goals appear different. Conflict naturally follows from this point."

It took a moment or two for her to parse the metallic creature's words. Afterwards, well, she was fairly certain she got most of that. From what she gathered, its words basically boiled down to 'I have desires of my own', which she had heard was a sort of mixed blessing, and which was a thing for those who ended up summoning smarter creatures. The smarter the Familiar, the more ideas and thoughts it would get, or so she had heard. Never had she heard of one where it went to _this_ extent, however. There were smart Familiars, certainly, but it was always the magic-wielder who was ultimately in charge. Hers clearly went a step further, which had regrettably resulted in a decidedly unruly Familiar with a tendency to take its own initiative over following hers. Cast into that light, its behavior suddenly made a lot more sense.

It was at that point that realization struck. It wasn't behaving like a Familiar. That was the entire problem. It was, for all intents and purposes, behaving like an entirely independent creature that just happened to pop up after the summoning. Even if common sense dictated that _no_ , golems could not think (nor could they be summoned in the summoning ritual, since they were not alive), evidence to the contrary was right in front of her, impossible to ignore. Despite the unfamiliar rune still visibly present on her Familiar's(?) form, however, something had clearly gone wrong with the summoning ritual itself. Somewhere along the line, the whole summoning ritual had gone wrong, and the result was plain to see.

With that fact in mind, the until-then distant danger of being thrown out suddenly seemed far too close for comfort. _Not to mention the risk of being accused a heretic due to having -albeit accidentally- pervaded the Founder's summoning ritual_. The latter thought was, if possible, even scarier than the former. Louise considered herself a faithful follower of the Founder's ideals. She was also, however, a noble, and for all her distinct lack of skill with the magical arts, she did know that there was a very real chance that everyone else may very well not see it like that. The thought of ending up punished like a heretic sent cold chills down her spine, but the other nobles would undoubtedly see the opportunity, and at that point, it would be one voice against many. It was not a war she could hope to win.

 _By the Founder, she was in so much trouble_.

 **End of file.**

Enjoy the cliffhanger? Me too. It was great fun.

I hope I didn't accidentally wreck the characterization here. It feels like I more or less got it right, but any thoughts, pointers, criticism, comments or what have you would be very much appreciated nonetheless.


	3. Chapter Three: Onset of Disaster

A/N: So… I'm sort of embarrassed about this, but the chapter has been lying around mostly-complete for months, and I haven't really touched it that much. Well, until now, at least. Of course, I did say the updates would be slow, but really. Leaving it mostly-complete for four months is taking it a bit too far. I've been a bit unsure about the direction the story took, and have had to scrap some text repeatedly before it turned out well enough.

I know some of you may have a problem with it… but at least I can say with quite a lot of certainty that we aren't walking the same path as canon did, and let's face it, it's impossible to make _everyone_ happy. Fair warning, there is a little bit of death later in the chapter, so if you're skittish about that, feel free to turn back now. The story rating has been set to T as a result.

 **Chapter Three: Onset of Disaster**

Louise belatedly realized that, somewhere along the line, her jaw had surreptitiously sunk to a point where she was, in fact, gaping. Only barely, perhaps, but her ingrained 'noble instincts' still felt it prudent to point it out.

She quietly told the aforementioned instincts to kindly shut it. About two seconds ago, she had realized that she technically _didn't_ have a Familiar in the truest sense of the word. That she had completely and utterly screwed up the summoning ritual. That she was possibly going to get killed in a very nasty way if anyone found out, and that she therefore, at least for the moment, couldn't care as much as a Founder's toenail about noble etiquette.

 _Then again_ , another thought chimed in, _this is about the worst time to start behaving like some commoner_. The last thing she wanted was to add yet another problem to her rapidly growing pile. It was already increasing in size at an alarming rate, and the last thing she needed was to grow it even further. Suffice to say she definitely didn't want to give anyone a reason to start digging, whether it be for information or her own grave.

It was with an audible ' _clack_ ' of teeth against teeth that her jaw swiftly slammed itself shut. Her training at the arts of the noble world, attained through year after year of growing up in a noble household, quickly began to kick in, telling her to be _calm_ and _composed in the face of danger_. She had to keep her mind clear, think of a plan, and then somehow solve the situation. Unfortunately, as her realization really began to hit home, the much-needed rationality was swiftly and brutally overridden by the much stronger urge to panic.

She felt her heart beating heavily, pushing again and again almost like as if someone was trying to hammer their way out of her ribcage. Admittedly, that comparison would probably be stretching it quite a bit, but to be fair, her state of mind was not exactly the best around this specific point in time. Her breaths likewise came in short bursts, a staccato of air being repulsed only to be sucked in again just as quickly. It was so wrong. It was so utterly, impossibly _wrong_. The summoning ritual could not go wrong. Ever since the days of the Founder himself, it had literally not happened, not even once.

By all rights, a failure of such a magnitude would be impossible to achieve. The ritual was one of the simplest there was, and it was basically foolproof. Not only would it be utter heresy to even try, but to actually break the summoning ritual, to actually make it _fail_ … it simply could. Not. Be. Done. Sure, you could make the entire ritual fizzle out, keep it from really starting in the first place. That was what she had been fearing beforehand. However, to twist it like she had somehow managed to… you would have to be an elf to even stand a chance, which was a terrifying thought in its own right.

Yet she had done it nonetheless. Somehow. Despite being considered an impossibility, she had somehow managed to fail at the binding without fizzling out the entire ritual. The binding always worked. Any failed casting, any mistake on the mage's part that would damage it… the entire ritual would be shut down by the very same, ancient failsafes that were established so long ago exactly to prevent this kind of situation.

Somehow, being impossibly bad did not feel like much of an accomplishment. She may have once been wishing that she could accomplish things that nobody else could, but by the Founder, this was _not_ what she meant with those words!

There had to be some way to fix this. Some way to- wait. Where was Geth?

Louise's head whipped around, eyes searching for the strange golem which had been right in front of her just a moment ago. She turned and- there! _When had it…_

No, not important. Focus, Louise.

Turning herself around to face the direction she'd come from, she quickly gained speed. Catching up with her escaping Familiar was rather trivial after that. Of course, she'd realized that it wasn't really her Familiar, not truly, but the term had sort of stuck by this point. Not to mention that, despite the fact that she had screwed up the summoning somehow, she _had_ still summoned it here to begin with, so maybe it still was?

This was so confusing. Which was, of course, not a fact which stopped Louise from calling out to the errant creature.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?!" she began, rushing to catch up with the other being's larger steps. Geth turned, and began to speak;

"We are-" Only to be interrupted by Louise, who was, in fact, in absolutely no mood to listen right now. The question had been a rhetorical one anyway.

"I'm standing here, terrified that we're both going to get killed, and you just- you just _run off!_ "

Geth froze. The orange apparition on its arm flickered away, and it moved to grab something off of its back. Whatever the item was, it had a coloration similar to the machine's own hull, and rapidly expanded in its hands to fit Geth's now double-handed grip. A weapon, perhaps? Were the circumstances less serious, Louise probably would have gaped at the phenomenon -internally, she _was_ still doing that- but as it was, she had greater concerns.

Then, stopping for a moment, it spoke;

"No hostiles detected."

 _Argh!_ Her Familiar was an idiot! Of all the braindead…

"Stop it!", she bit out;  
"This isn't a problem you can punch away. If they figure out what happened, they'll brand me a heretic, kill me and do Founder knows what to you!"

"This world appears to lack advanced technology" -wait _what?_ This was ridiculous. There were airships and everything! Tristain was _not_ primitive!  
"Our weaponry is effective against unshielded targets. We would be able to eliminate threats."

Now it was offering to fight for her? That was… kind of endearing, actually, despite its ridiculous overconfidence. Still, it would definitely be best to set it straight before it went and got itself killed somehow. No matter what that thing it was holding was -some sort of musket?- it definitely wouldn't be able to stand up to a whole college of mages, much less the whole country. You would have to be the Founder himself (or maybe just a really skilled elf) in order to take down a nation single-handedly, and it clearly wasn't.

She sighed. Thick-headed indeed.  
"No you wouldn't. You can't fight the country; wouldn't even make it out of the building. You're not even a mage! The academy would lock you up or kill you and blame me for everything!"

Unimpressed by her tirade, the machine quickly conjured up a response of its own.

"We have detected neither biotics nor weaponry within this structure. You are unarmed. We would not be stopped."

Frustrated at the increasingly annoying, seemingly inexhaustible supply of stupidity being thrown at her, Louise considered her options. This level of raw stupid was not something she had encountered before. What did it mean they weren't armed? The entire academy was full of mages and-

Wait. Did it not know what a mage was?

Suspecting that she may have found the source of the stupidity being leveraged at her, Louise fumbled for her wand, digging through her robes in search of the elusive item. It had to be here somewhere. She was sure she'd grabbed it before heading to breakfast, so if she just- aha!

Triumphantly, the offending magical tool was pulled out of a side pocket. Geth looked thoroughly unimpressed. Well, she'd show it. She'd demonstrate her magical prowess, and thus, she would put an end to the argument before this stupidity drove her mad. Thus, she began the incantations for a very rudimentary spell. _Please don't explode._

Then again, her magic never did what she wanted it to, so maybe it wasn't that surprising that instead of the flash of light she had intended to summon, the result was very similar to her typical explosion. A burst of viridian-green energy, a miniaturized sonic boom, and then bits and pieces of stone wall were spraying out onto the floor.

Geth turned to the defaced stonework, its facial plates now conveying surprise, an unintelligible noise reverberating through the air. It stared for a moment before turning back around… and promptly snatching Louise's wand right out of her grip.

"Hey!", she protested, reaching for the stolen item. That was her _wand!_ She could scarcely believe that her Familiar had just taken it, the item robbed from her hand with embarrassing ease. Annoyingly, Geth simply stepped out of her reach, its free hand glowing as the mysterious orange phenomenon was brandished at her precious wand.

"Give it back!", she demanded and, when no immediate handover seemed forthcoming, lunged forwards in an attempt to retrieve the desired item by force. Unfortunately, Louise was not exactly a paragon of melee combat. Her telegraphed moves were far too obvious to anyone who knew where to look, which ultimately meant that her attack was sidestepped without a second glance. Instead of successfully retrieving the item, she instead ended up moving right past her target, crashing into the wall behind it shoulder first. A small jolt of pain flashed up to her brain from her upper arm, the signal telling her brain cells one thing and one thing only: _ow_.

Although Louise wasn't exactly used to pain, the impact wasn't even enough to leave a real bruise, and so was shrugged off without any great effort. Slowly, she turned back towards her Familiar…

-{III}-

 **A moment ago.**

Legion didn't pay a great deal of attention towards Louise's ineffectual flailing. The main reason for this was the fact that they were preoccupied with something a tad more important. Namely, analyzing the 'device' -if one could call it that- which had spawned the sudden energy discharge from a few moments ago.

Their omnitool worked to its full capacity, analyzing the pointy item only to come up with a rather unexpected conclusion. Namely, as far as any normal scans could tell, it was nothing more than a completely normal, mundane stick of wood. Albeit a finely-crafted stick, but a stick nonetheless. This essentially left behind three viable options.

One: Their omnitool was simply failing to detect whatever triggered the blast, thus seeing the item as harmless when in truth, it was anything but.

Two: The item was single use only, its power source expended and therefore, as common sense dictated, impossible to find. Given that Louise-Vallerie was currently attempting to retrieve said item, they deemed this the least plausible of their three options.

Three: The blast was some form of hitherto-unknown biotic power originating from the girl herself, where this item was either a decoy or some sort of conduit.

The last option was simultaneously the most and least preferable. Shields generally blocked biotic powers without much difficulty, their emitters counteracting the attacking mass effect fields, whereas shield effectiveness was not guaranteed in the other cases. However, a biotic foe could not be reliably disarmed, and judging such an enemy's power level could likewise prove difficult pre-engagement.

They neatly sidestepped a horribly telegraphed attempt by the only nearby organic to retake her stolen item.

Must determine next course of action. Building consensus…

Consensus achieved. Enquiring about nature of blast.

"This item is unfamiliar to us", they vocalized, turning to face the Vallerie girl now situated against the wall.

"We request an explanation."

"That's my wand! Give it back!", she retorted, futilely trying to retrieve the item yet again. Processing the reply, Legion neatly stepped out of her reach before she could acquire a grip.

Performing count-sorted term search 'wand'…

Error: no extranet connection. Limiting search to archived knowledge.

Thirty-seven Alliance cultural references found. No other matches.

'Wand' defined as focal point for 'magical' source of power. 'Magic' theorized as synonym for biotics. Probability of biotic conduit theory now 77.31%.

Building consensus…

Consensus achieved. Performing practical test to ascertain shield efficiency.

"We request a second demonstration", they voiced, holding the item out. The item was quickly and triumphantly snatched out of their grasp, Louise managing a very quick victory celebration before the Geth platform's words caught up with her.

"Wait", she began, clearly not having expected that particular line;  
"I nearly blew a hole in the wall and you want me to try _again?_ "

"Affirmative", they replied;  
" We will temporarily refocus our shield emitters to generate a localized mass effect disturbance. Target the field when it appears."

The organic, unfortunately, mostly looked puzzled by their request. It wasn't really the disbelief from a moment ago so much as it appeared to be a simple lack of comprehension. Legion, oblivious to the fact, continued as planned, diverting power from the rest of their shield system to temporarily overcharge the emitter by their right arm. Their shielding dissipated harmlessly, leaving their platform dangerously exposed, but in exchange, a small, fluctuating orb of scintillating mass effect fields slowly took form above the palm of their hand. It wasn't a particularly stable orb -this wasn't really what the emitters were designed for- but unlike organics, the Geth had enough technological aptitude to keep the unconventional effect from collapsing entirely. They wouldn't be able to maintain it for very long -the emitter would only last about five or ten seconds before it would begin to burn out under the duress, fifteen before it was irreparably damaged- but for now, it was working.

There was one problem, however. Namely, the organic wasn't doing what she was supposed to. Instead of triggering another blast, she was staring at the miniature mass effect field, her expression a mixture of wonderment, curiosity and fear. Almost as if on instinct, she had brought her so-called 'wand' up to point at the platform, but then she had just… stopped, standing there and staring.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Louise still didn't act.

"Target the field", they urged. The word seemed to jolt the girl out of her stupor. Four seconds.

She fumbled her movements, nearly dropping the wand. Five seconds. The heat buildup within the mass effect shield emitter was starting to reach potentially hazardous levels.

Six seconds. The wand was realigned. She began to say something.

Seven seconds. No detonation yet. Heat buildup was reaching harmful levels. They would abort the attempt soon.

Eight sec-

There was an explosion. Chunks of stone rained down around them. One struck one of their headplates with a small 'clink'. They took the opportunity to shut down the overworked shield emitter, which powered off with a pitiful whine as power was re-routed to the other emitters, leaving it to cool off in peace.

They turned their optic upwards, spotting the blast hole that had torn straight through the ceiling, leaving a small opening behind. To have seen what just happened, you would more or less have to have been a machine, or possibly a really perceptive, abnormally quick Salarian. Fortunately, Legion was, in fact, a machine, and though they had not managed to process the video input in time, they could play it back to observe it in detail.

The playback began. They observed as Louise moved, her wand held out, pointing at the mass effect manifestation. Frame after frame passed unmolested… until suddenly, there was a burst of green. The semi-chaotic burst of green energy made it to the field in almost no time at all, entering the field with ease, and then…

Well, then it became rather more peculiar. As soon as the irregular energy orb made it into the mass effect field, the distorted space began to warp its shape. Frame by frame, the energy sphere narrowed until its shape was more akin to a spear or javelin than the coconut-like shape it once possessed. The energy shape conformed to the fields' whims, turned upwards by the distorted space even as it narrowed… and then it escaped the fields' grasp, soaring up to blast a hole clean through the ceiling. Exactly how this interaction worked would have required an advanced degree in theoretic mass effect applications and quite a bit of study into the workings of void magic besides. If one were to simplify it somewhat, it was essentially the case of one side of the blast having a lesser 'weight' (in layman's terms) than the other, causing the entirety of it to turn to the side as it tried to retain coherency. Against normal shielding, it probably would just have exploded, and even in the current situation, the odds of it doing what it did were probably somewhere around one in a hundred. Not that it was really that simple, but still.

Not-so-coincidentally, the struck ceiling was in fact the same ceiling which made up the floor of the relic vault. They had, after all, been interrupted in the middle of their investigations of possible breaching points, and in a way, this did indeed do the trick.

Unfortunately, the hole wasn't large enough for them to fit through it, and they found it improbable that they could replicate the happy accident which had just occurred. However, one thing they _could_ do was to generate a combat drone with their omni-tool past the gap, and then use that to look around instead. Thus, with Louise too busy gaping at them to protest, that was exactly what they did.

-{III}-

 **Same place and time.**

Louise was, to put it bluntly, shocked. Her Familiar had _magic_. Her _Familiar_ had magic. _Her_ Familiar had magic. She really didn't know what part of that statement was more shocking. Although she had absolutely no idea what that… _thing_ it has summoned up was, that definitely wasn't something _any_ commoner or golem could do. The glowing thing on its arm -which it was now sticking into the newly-created hole in the ceiling for whatever reason- should have been enough of a hint. She should have seen it sooner.

No wonder the ritual had failed. She had summoned a _mage_ , for Founder's sake! The ritual wasn't designed for binding mages – it would have been stranger if it _hadn't_ failed in that situation. The machine mage, if one could call it that, shouldn't have been possible to summon in the first place, yet here it was nonetheless. She wasn't sure if this made her more or less of an accidental heretic than when she thought she'd somehow sabotaged the binding herself.

 _Unless_ , a chilling thought made itself known, _it is an elven creation_. It made a horrifying amount of sense. If anyone, _anyone_ could make a completely autonomous, self-aware golem _and_ give it magical powers, it would be _them_. If _anyone_ could make the summoning ritual malfunction and summon something like _this_ , it would be _them_. Elves. Mortal enemies of all the Founder stood for. To even _suggest_ working with them was tantamount to heresy, and here she was, having just helped one of their golems blow a hole in the ceiling.

Louise suddenly found herself struggling to breathe. She was _so_ dead. If anyone found out she was consorting with elves, even keeping the unique circumstances in mind, they would probably kill her and destroy the rest of her family just in case. That was unless her mother got to her first. She was _so_ dead. Her family could be facing the same fate. They would hurt Cattleya. Sweet, harmless Cattleya. They would burn the estate to the ground, drag the Vallerie name into the dirt, destroy everything she cared about.

 _Wait_. _I'm getting ahead of myself here_.

A ray of hope presented itself. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was another explanation. Founder knew she couldn't think of any right now, but maybe, just maybe there was an explanation that both made sense _and_ didn't make for a one-way trip to the grave.

She looked over to her Familiar, a creature which seemed to be the source of almost all her problems these days. It was retrieving something from the crack in the ceiling, something which only barely failed to fit through the gap. One particularly forceful tug from Geth's side later, and the item came loose, descending into the machine mage's waiting grip.

Louise could honestly say that she hadn't seen anything like the object before. The strange, tubular shape. Its white-aqua coloration, strangely pleasant to look at. The unfamiliar symbol on its side. The way Geth almost seemed to be cautious with its handling… it was peculiar, to say the least. However, she was more concerned with avoiding a sudden and untimely death by heresy than she was with figuring out what the strange item was, and the first step, she reasoned, was to simply ask.

Of course, asking her Familiar anything regularly seemed to result in a varying amount of insanity and little else, but still, it was worth a try. Perhaps, however, she could have been a little less blunt with her question.

"Were you made by elves?", she blurted, only afterwards realizing that it may not have been the most sensitive thing to ask. Not that Geth seemed to care.

"Negative", it replied, its one-eyed gaze now focused on her face. Almost immediately, Louise let out a sigh of relief. A niggling doubt remained -it _could_ be lying- but at least in that case it probably wouldn't tell anyone else either, which was still an (admittedly smaller) relief. She really had to stop panicking about this. One realization after the other had hit her like a blast of magic in the face until she was basically panicking about every new reveal that kept coming up. She was a Vallerie. She could calm down. She would be fi-

Wait a minute. It didn't know what a mage was before. Did that mean…?

"Do you know Brimir's teachings?" If the answer was yes, she'd be _fine_. She would have summoned a fellow believer, another follower of the Founder's faith. A-

"Negative." -aaand of course not. Geth would be a heretic, wouldn't it? Just her luck. At this rate, she was starting to wonder whether she'd done anything that had made Brimir himself take offense, and that this entire mess was the punishment for said incident.

Then again, if that was the case, then this was a most cruel and unusual punishment which she really didn't think matched the Founder's style. It was far too unorthodox for that.

Nevertheless, she had just about had enough of this. Not only did she have to conceal the fact that her Familiar had _magic_ of all things, but she needed to hide that it was a heretic, that it had taken something out of the _ceiling_ , that it may or may not have been made by elves… the list went on. Enough was enough.

It was thus that Louise, with as much force as her short body could muster, grabbed onto her Familiar's arm and began to pull. She would drag it back to her room, she would lock it in there and, Founder be willing, she would finally get some peace.

Strangely, after she told it where they were going, Geth offered no protests.

-{III}-

 **Roughly three hours later.**

Headmaster Osmond, square class mage and the man ultimately responsible for the entire college, stared unhappily at an empty spot in the air. There was something decidedly wrong with this particular spot of air. Not the air itself, but rather what was placed there. Or, more accurately, what was _supposed_ to be placed there, but clearly wasn't. Indeed, the spot that once held the mighty staff of destruction, a spot nestled safely within the most secure vault in all of Tristania, was empty.

Disturbingly so. About an hour ago, someone had notified him that a hole between two floors had been found. Specifically, a hole which just so happened to connect the ceiling of a normal corridor with the floor of the vault of artifacts. The hole was still there, at the edge of his vision, almost taunting in its persistent presence. It wasn't large enough for a person -nobody would fit through there regardless of their stature- but some Familiars, on the other hand, _could_ fit through there, and it just happened to be large enough to barely fit the breadth of a particular, missing staff.

In hindsight, it had been a rather narrow-minded idea to put all the enchantments on the door whilst leaving the other surfaces protected mostly through proximity to the powerful magical defenses. Sure, it would have required a tremendous amount of raw force to bust a hole in the wall large enough for a person to fit through, but such a large hole evidently wasn't a necessity for a prospective thief to accomplish their goals.

They had to retrieve it, and quickly. Step one of that was, of course, to identify the thief. The only problem with that was that there was a great deal of people with Familiars small enough to fit through the problematic hole, and he couldn't very well start pointing fingers based solely on the size of a person's Familiar. Not to mention that the nature of the hole made any finger-pointing even more dubious, as penetration wasn't exactly the strong suit of your average student's magical capabilities. Why the damage on the wall down there had the characteristic jaggedness of blast damages which resembled Louise Francoise de la Vallerie's disastrous magic more than anything.

…Nah. She couldn't manage this. His Familiar had run into hers during the night, wandering the halls just outside his own room, strangely carrying a bundle of clothing. If he didn't know better, he'd conclude that his Familiar was playing a joke on him, but the point was that the girl's Familiar was way too big to fit through this gap. Small the girl may have been, but she wasn't small enough to fit through the gap either, and if she'd used her magic to try and get the staff out of the room, the signs would be clear as day. The half-formed hypothesis was thrown out before it could fully solidify, abandoned for what seemed like more fruitful pursuits.

With that idea discarded, that left the thief as either a member of staff (unlikely), a student who knew more than they let on (possible) or an outsider who somehow managed to get all the way in here without being seen in the middle of the day (also unlikely). The rumors of the master thief Foquet being on the loose was likewise a possibility, but then again, that still left the same problems as with any other outsider. If he was really lucky, this was someone's bad idea of a prank, but he somehow doubted anyone would go to such lengths just to play a prank on him.

On the plus side, the staff of destruction was a rather large and bulky object – you wouldn't easily leave the grounds without looking strange or worse if you were carrying it around. That meant that either the staff was still on the grounds -in which case they had to start searching posthaste before this ceased being true- or someone had seen the thief escape with it, which would at least get them a lead on where to start.

It would probably be best to let the student body pitch in too. The more eyes looking, the better the chances of stopping the thief. The message would have to be spread that they were looking for a stolen item, its appearance described similarly to the staff of destruction's. The fact that the item in question was in fact the staff, which had been taken from the artifact vault, wasn't exactly necessary information, however. All they needed to be told was that it was dangerous and needed to be retrieved posthaste – quite a few students would no doubt pitch in from that information alone, given that someone informed them of the fact. Thus, that was exactly what he did.

-{III}-

 **The dining hall, thirty minutes later.**

It was in the middle of lunch that Louise, who happened to be consuming a fish-and-potatoes dish at the time, was most rudely interrupted by a voice echoing above the din of meals gradually being consumed. A few hours ago, she had more or less shoved her most unusual maybe-not-her-Familiar into her room. Then she had shut the door as insistently as she could, for one particular reason: to finally get some sense of normalcy. Rationally, she knew that Geth was still in her room. Well, unless it had run off, which would bring a whole host of issues which she preferred not to think about. Rationally, she also knew that it hadn't, in fact, evaporated the moment she shut the door. Still, for the sake of one's sanity, one sometimes had to pretend that things were normal, that everything was going to work out just fine.

Indeed, she had spent the last several hours pretending exactly that, trying to mentally recover from the multitude of shocking revelations that had been tossed to her after breakfast. She hadn't been entirely successful. Her worries kept nagging at the back of her mind no matter what she did – the illusion of normalcy definitely hadn't been an all-encompassing one. Still, for what it was worth, she _did_ feel better now than she had before.

Part of her noted that she was essentially hiding from her Familiar at this point. If asked, she definitely wouldn't call it hiding -she still had at least some of her noble pride- but nevertheless, the principle of the matter was probably that she was avoiding it. Sure, not having her Familiar around when everyone else did certainly affected how people saw her, but somehow, she had a feeling that actually showing off her Familiar would only make things worse.

Of course, she knew in the back of her mind that she would have to do exactly that sooner or later. Many people spent lots of time training their Familiars for that very occasion, seeking the status of victory in the competition in question. She would have to participate -sitting it out wasn't an option- and if she was to be entirely frank with herself, the end result was probably going to be huge. Whether it would be a huge success or a huge disaster was another question entirely, but she preferred not to think about that right now.

As fate would have it, however, not thinking about her Familiar would quickly prove itself as not being an option. Why? Well, suffice to say that the sudden arrival of one of the teachers set things in motion. After the initial, obligatory moments to get the hall to quiet down, servants stopping as any good servants should and students eventually following their example, there was an announcement. An announcement that, for Louise, could be summed up in one word: trouble.

An important item had been stolen. The hitherto-unidentified thief was probably still somewhere on the school grounds, and any help at catching said thief would be much appreciated. The stolen item was roughly cylindrical in shape, and possessed a white and… blue coloration? Oh dear.

The announcement continued with mentioning how the item was very dangerous, how students should be cautious. How they should call for assistance if they found the thief, _not_ take the risk to try and retrieve the item single-handedly. However, Louise had stopped listening by this point, far too alarmed by the unsettling implications. The described item sounded suspiciously similar to what Geth had pulled out of that hole. As if she didn't have enough problems without thievery being added to the list.

Part of her wanted to just rush off then and there, but common sense dictated that such an action would look suspicious at best. The item in question, if it was indeed the same as what her Familiar had appropriated, had to be disposed of posthaste. The alternative was to be seen as a thief on top of everything else, something which wouldn't exactly be desirable, to put it lightly.

Whilst she couldn't just rush off in the middle of the announcement, however, a chance soon showed itself. Indeed, many students seemed rather eager to get a chance for glory. Some, such as a lesser noble whose name she thought was Guiche, outright stated that they were doing it to impress the ladies, and that of course a man such as him wouldn't shy away from as important a task as this. Others were more reserved, their reasons going unstated or, in one notable case, being 'I just want to help' – a rare attitude indeed in the world of noble politics, at least if it was genuine.

As for Louise, this presented a fine opportunity for her to slip out, her course set for her room even as some others left alone or split off in groups of two or three to commence their search. If only she had started to move a few minutes earlier, the ongoing events could have turned out very different indeed.

The first sign she got that something had gone horribly wrong was a very particular smell: smoke was in the air. The reason for this fact abruptly became clear as she entered the dormitory itself. This reason, disturbing as it was, was quite simple: Her door had been knocked off its hinges, half the place was _on_ _fire_ and Kirche's Familiar lay slain in the middle of the corridor. Its side had been ripped open by numerous small projectiles of some sort, and if she were to hazard a guess, it was probably caused by either a skilled earth mage or half a dozen muskets all hitting the same target. Of the perpetrator, there was no sign, and neither did Kirche herself seem to be close, although Louise could faintly hear the sound of magic going off somewhere in the distance, along with staccato bursts of a different, unfamiliar character. Whatever the sound was, it was decidedly _odd_.

Despite a large part of herself which, upon seeing the fire, reacted like a rational person and wanted to run away, she nevertheless began to approach. Slow, cautious steps gradually carried her closer to the steadily growing inferno. She reached the body of the fallen fire lizard -Flame, was it?- and carefully gave it a small prod with her left foot. The act spurred no activity from the creature, though whether it was actually dead or just very close to it was much harder to tell. She couldn't help but wince slightly – corpses were never pleasant.

Somewhere along the line, she had drawn her wand. The wooden shaft didn't feel as reassuring within her grip as she would have liked, but she still found some measure of comfort in its presence as she continued her approach. Whatever had torn the lizard open like that, she didn't want to be caught unarmed, and her malfunctioning magic was still better than nothing. Hopefully. Unless she blew herself up first.

With the door effectively having been removed from the equation, there was nothing to stop her from looking through the vacated opening. She approached, leaned forwards, and peaked through to a sight which was anything but pleasing. That her dorm room had been ruined was a very severe understatement indeed. Even if she didn't take the liberal amount of ongoing fire into consideration, it would still have looked like a war zone. Of course, it _was_ technically a war zone, or so it would seem, but that was somewhat beside the point. The fact of the matter was, the window was smashed, the bed was anything but intact and she didn't even want to look at what had happened to the rest of the furniture. Of whoever had caused the calamity, however, there was no sign.

It was at that point that she saw the pieces of what had to have been the staff of destruction, small metallic fragments scattered about, and only then did things really hit home. They had accidentally blown a hole in the ceiling some time back, Geth had retrieved _something_ from the opening and then the staff of destruction had _mysteriously_ gone missing. Evidently, someone -Kirche?- had found it, taken offense, and this was the result. Oh, she was going to _kill_ it. In the span of a single day, her new Familiar had caused her no end of problems. She may have ended up with a magically-capable Familiar that made absolutely no sense besides, but this? This was taking it one step too far.

Part of her felt dangerously close to having a breakdown… but no. Not yet. She had to… she had to keep calm – to not let her emotions get the best of her. The crying could come later – the tides may have turned against her ever since the summoning, but she had to. As of right now, she had a… _different_ matter to attend to.

Fully intent on her great, terrible and _fully_ _justified_ revenge, Louise stalked off on a path towards the sounds of combat in the distance. She would find her Familiar there, she was sure of it… and when she did, there would be hell to pay.

 **End of file.**

So, I know I said cliffhanger last update… but there appears to have been a slight off-by-one error. Well, anyway, here you go.

Sorry about Kirche's Familiar. It sort of just… happened, and by the time I'd written it, I couldn't get the story to flow any other way. I tried to consider alternatives -it's part of why this update took so long- but in the end, it just didn't work out. Besides, as Legion is prone to lethargy unless properly incentivized, I hold firm that the story needed a bit of a push to really get going… and this was it.


	4. Chapter Four: Escalation

A/N: Well, this took a while, to say the least. Still, here you have it, folks. An update at last.

 **Chapter Four: Escalation**

Louise stalked onto the field. There was no other way to describe it. Her wand was clutched tightly in her right hand, drawn and ready to be used. Her expression was one of grim determination tinted with fury, and the less said about her unladylike posture, the better.

The field in question was one of several. There were several others like it within the pentagon-like structure of the academy, but this one was distinct in that there was magic flying through the air. Louise's mind detachedly took in the scene. On one end of the field, near the central structure, there were four mages. There was Kirche, there was that quiet girl who had summoned a dragon (Tabitha, was it?), and then two males she didn't recognize. She couldn't spot the dragon, but one of the males had a hawk of some sort squawking worriedly on his shoulder.

Tabitha was busy trying to tend to one of the males, the one with the hawk, one hand grasping her wand whilst the other tried to stem the bloodflow from some sort of wound on the male's stomach-area. The other two, meanwhile, were busy flinging spells over towards the other end of the courtyard. A flash of fire erupted from Kirche's wand, tracked by Louise's eyes as it soared over to splash against the stone wall on the other side.

The reason why quickly becomes apparent. The hit area was fairly close to the academy's main gates, and shortly after the fiery impact, a figure leans out from its cover behind the opening's side. Her _stupid, stubborn, infuriating_ Familiar. With that hunched-over head silhouette, it could be nothing else. Before her eyes, it brings up some form of object. From the object's tip sky-blue flashes erupt, and the mages on the other end of the field abruptly duck as equally blue impact-flashes chip off small bits of stone from their cover.

Completely ignoring the danger of doing so, Louise walks right into it all. Her determined stride slowly takes her closer to her quarry, unconcerned with the firefight around her. Geth launches its distinct magic at the group of mages, achieving little more than suppression. A fairly sizable rock -presumably from the male- strikes it a moment later, the high-velocity impact sending the projectile ricocheting off of some sort of defensive barrier, causing it to flicker dangerously.

The elven construct ducks away, taking cover as it barely avoids another firebolt. A moment later, a bright-orange, semi-transparent ball materializes where it just was. Glowing with eldritch, unnatural shapes, the obviously magical construct sets course for its master's opponents, nimbly dodging both the first and second spell sent at it. The third sees it obliterated in a flash of fire, the glowing shapes flickering away as the entity disintegrates into nothingness.

By that point, however, Louise's quarry has already emerged from its cover, fully prepared to retaliate. It lets out a burst of magic, and then it finally spots her. It freezes, headplates rearranging into an expression of surprise as its singular eye focuses on hers. For a moment, Louise feels her resolve start to crumple as doubt hits her (can she really attack her own Familiar?), but a thought back to the seemingly endless set of problems it has caused her is enough to restore her determination. That elven automaton had caused and was still causing her no end of problems, and she would put a stop to it, permanently if necessary.

Knowing that explosions were sure to follow, Louise raised her wand. Indeed, a moment later, an explosion did follow. Only, it was not an explosion of green. Instead, an explosion of fire blossomed from Louise's right shoulder as a magical spell struck her from behind. The petite mage stumbled, thoughts of revenge immediately replaced by _I'm on fire help put it out put it out!_ even as she was knocked off-balance by the blast.

Already feeling the burns developing, Louise's panicked mind did the only thing she could think of, shedding her very flammable robes fast enough to quite possibly set a new world record in undressing. That very same moment she found herself scrambling into cover in a panicked jumble of movement, all previous concerns forgotten in the face of the much bigger issue known as survival.

It was to the searing ache of a burnt shoulder that the unfortunate void mage returned to her senses. Cold stone pressed against her back, doing little to alleviate the pain. Her gut instinct said to call for help, to find a water mage who could fix the pain and make it go away. The more rational side of her said _wait a minute_ , recalling the series of events that had led her to this situation. More specifically, she distinctly remembered being hit from behind. As in, not by her Familiar, but from the mages, and the only fire mage she knew of over there was...

 _Did she really just...?_

Well, suffice to say that she was going to strangle Kirche the next time she got her hands on the busty harlot, etiquette be damned.

A more reasonable person might have assumed that the hit had been a case of bad aim. A mistake not to be repeated. However, given the circumstances Louise was fully prepared to assume the worst. Grasping her wand tightly, the lightly dressed mage winced at the feeling of her injured shoulder. She focused her thoughts; her mother had taught her to be strong. It hurt, but she wouldn't give in that easily.

 _She was in so much trouble._

Louise would deal with her wayward Familiar in due time. Until then, she had a life to defend, and for once, her magic's tendency to explode everything it touched would work to her advantage. It wasn't as though things could get much worse, and some small part of her relished the opportunity to finally let free her frustrations.

 _She didn't want this, she wasn't supposed to do this, why was she doing this?_

She raised her wand, and prepared her incantations.

-{IV}-

 **Legion. Academy gates. A few seconds later.**

A bang echoes through the air as, in a flash of viridian-green energy, a part of the cover behind which the platform's foes were taking cover is obliterated. The incoming fire pauses for a moment, almost as if in shock, only to intensify a second later, barraging their position with fire and stone.

This time, however, the Geth had an organic on their side. It appeared that their earlier efforts had borne fruit. Even so, that only added another statistical minute or two to their holdout time. They were, admittedly, rather lacking in the organic interaction department, which was what they believed had led them to this situation to begin with. As such, a peaceful resolution seemed statistically improbable, and seeing as they could spot a few more organics making their way onto the field, their position could not be held indefinitely.

They swap their pulse rifle for their sniper weapon, leaning out of cover. In a smooth, efficient motion, the targeting reticule aligns towards one of the approaching humans. The rifle recoils slightly as the comparatively heavy round shoots out of the weapon's barrel, perfecftly aimed and on target. Their assumed foe keels over. Dead or incapacitated; Legion doesn't care.

One of the others gesture with their wand, calling forth a barrier of solid rock to obstruct the platform's line of fire. This was, in a word, alarming. Until now, it had been a stalemate; neither side could leave cover for fear of being mowed down by the opposition. If their foes could summon their own cover, however, that altered the whole scenario.

Consensus achieved.

They turn to their sole ally. For a moment, they wish Shepard-Commander were here. To a trained eye, Louise's terror would have been evident. She didn't want to be involved in this; she just wanted things to go back to normal; for things to go _right_ for once. The Commander would have found a way to use this; a way to safely escape the situation. It was statistically probable. Legion, unlike Shepard, did not have a trained eye for these kinds of things.

"Louise-Vallerie. Situation untenable. We suggest immediate withdrawal", they call out. The mention of her name seems to draw Louise's attention, and for a moment it seems as though she is about to do something incredibly stupid. She leans out of cover...

Another fiery blast from the other mages wooshes past her, barely missing her head and promptly chasing any wayward bravery out of her system. She pulls back, ducking back into cover with a wide-eyed look on her face.

"We will require cover fire", the platform speaks, summoning another combat drone. For a good few seconds, the still wide-eyed Louise-Vallerie only manages to stare dumbly at them in response. Then she looks conflicted, seeming to doubt her actions, before finally a facade of determination settles upon her face. She raises her wand...

A flash of green from above precludes the sudden collapse of the academy entrance's archway. Bits of stone tumble down as, with one side of its support shattered, the entire archway crashes to the ground in pieces. The rubble blocks the entranceway, and though it may not be perfecft cover, it is the best chance of escape they will get.

"Falling back", they state, and then take off running, leaving Louise scrambling to catch up.

-{IV}-

 **Louise Francoise le Blank de la Vallerie. Forest shack. Thirty minutes later.**

Louise stared emptily at the dilapidated wall. In the span of just a few days, her entire life had been turned upside down. She had been cursed in the worst possible way. For once in her life, her magic had accomplished something. She had summoned a Familiar. Only, if she had known what the consequences of her success would be, she would much rather just have gotten expelled.

There. She said it. Her Familiar was an irredeemable pile of heretical elven junk that had torn down her life at a pace that was quite frankly staggering. She was a fugitive now. A noble on the run, and one without her robes at that. She didn't want to be a criminal. She didn't want any of this, not a single bit.

 _What would Mother say?_ She couldn't even bear to think about it.

If only she could go back in time and stop her Familiar before it caused all this. No matter how much that harlot deserved it, things would have turned out so much better if she had thrown her spell at Geth instead of at Kirche. Founder knows it deserved it. Nevertheless, the spur of the moment had led her down this path, and once the spell was thrown... well it wasn't as though she could just back out after that. In for a copper, in for a gold.

Still, it could at least pretend to be apologetic. It hadn't apologised, hadn't tried to compensate her or fix things. It hadn't done a thing to solve the steadily-growing catastrophe. Louise liked to think that she made her own displeasure with the situation quite clear. Maybe she was foolish for expecting an elven construct to actually respect her feelings, but they could at least try to get along.

The moment she got here, she'd sat down, shell-shocked. The events finally caught up with her, and she didn't know how to deal with that. She still didn't know.

It, on the other hand, just stood there. Silent. Implacable. Unyielding. Staring unflinchingly into the forest without so much as moving a muscle. Did- did it even understand what it had done? Did she have to spell things out for it?

No matter what she did, its motivations remained a mystery to her. It clearly wasn't like a normal Familiar. If it were, they wouldn't be in this situation. She just wanted to understand.

"Why?" she asked. It was barely a whisper, yet Geth caught it nonetheless. That unsettling, slightly glowing eye turned to face her. Louise felt as though it was silently prompting her to elaborate, and elaborate she did.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, louder than before. The construct just stared at her, the air pregnant with a moment's pause, and then;

"Do what?" it asked, oblivious. There was some brief annoyance as she replied.

"All of it."

It stared at her, headplates moving minutely.

"We do not understand," it replied, and annoyance flared into anger. Louise rose to her feet with the fury of a woman driven past her limits. Refusing to acknowledge the sting of her still-injured shoulder, the mage's hand clenched around her wand tightly enough for her to worry that it might snap in two. This was it. This was the last straw. She'd had it with that stupid golem.

Her arm seemed to move of its own volition as she raised her wand to point at the sole creature (and she used the term loosely) in the shack with her.

Geth replied in kind. Its motion was much faster than Louise's own as it reached behind its back, pulling out a strange object. Even as it unfolded into a larger form, Louise already recognized it. The item was its... well, she hesitated to call it a wand, but whatever it was she had seen it in action and she didn't want to get hit by those blue blasts if she could help it.

Part of her felt fear, and she was pretty sure she had gone somewhat pale, but no. She refused to back down now; she would stand firm no matter what, the rule of steel firm in her mind. Curse it all, but she would get her answers or d-d-die trying.

She didn't back down.

"You're going to tell me everything right now or I swear, by the Founder I'm going to use this thing. Why did you start that fight?"

Geth, despite not having the ability to do so, seemed to blink at her. Then;

"We did not initiate hostilities."

So now it was pinning the blame on the other party. Oh no it was _not_ getting away that easily.

"Why were you in that fight!" she shouted more than asked, the sound seeming to echo away into the forest beyond their little ruin of a shack. Geth's answer was immediate and, once again, evading the hidden depths of her question.

"They attacked. We returned fire."

 _But why?_ She wanted to scream the question at its face, but the thick-headed golem was too stupid to elaborate with the entire answer. She wanted to know why it had done what it did; why it had created this disaster. Why it had ruined her life. She _needed_ to know.

 _Maybe another angle?_

"Why did you take the... thing?" She was quite sure that it had, in fact, taken the item that had then been announced stolen by the faculty. After a moment's thought, she added the words;  
"...Where and what is it, anyway?"

"What thing?" it played dumb, failing to give any reasonable answer. Louise growled something unintelligible under her breath.

"The white and blue... whatever it was." Hey, it was harder than it looked to explain something you had only seen once and didn't know the name of.

Geth was quiet for a moment.

"It was a missile launcher;" a what?  
"We required element zero." Alright now she was just confused.

"Element zero...?" Louise enquired, half-afraid of hearing the answer. It wasn't referring to her, was it? The last thing she wanted was to be used as a sacrifice in some strange elven blood ritual.

Her Familiar reached for- Louise blanched as its hand went into the hole in its torso. At some point, that aspect of its physique had simply stopped registering to her. Just another reminder of its unnatural nature, yet one that put its seeming life into stark contrast.

The limb re-emerged holding a pile of strange-looking... _what was that?_ It looked like just a bunch of metal pieces to her, if very strangely-shaped, colorful ones.

It was a question swiftly answered by her unmanageable golem;

"These components contain element zero."

The petite girl exhaled in relief. It wasn't talking about her. She really had to calm herself down before she managed to make things worse somehow. Her exasperation was rapidly outgrowing her anger.

"What is element zero?", she half-sighed in annoyance, tired of the amount of work necessary to get any straight answers out of her Familiar. It wasn't that her questions weren't being answered. They were, in the worst possible way. Geth took _everything_ literally. She had to spell every single little thing out for it before she got anything more than idiocy and nonsense in return.

Indeed, it was doing that very thing right now. Instead of telling her what she wanted to know, it was saying something about metals, a mass of... something and a thing called the 'citadel races' which she assumed to be some sort of strange competition inside a citadel. Complete and utter Founder-cursed nonsense.

Feeling her temper flaring up again, the young mage pressed for something more tangible.

"What does it _do?_ ", she emphasized, interrupting her would-be Familiar mid-speech. It froze for a moment, seeming to blink at her. Then it moved, its free hand coming up to fiddle with the pile for a second as it plugged in a small wire. It did _something_ more _,_ and then space was rippling in a clearly magical but unfamiliar phenomenon around the item.

"This", Geth responded. Louise could only gape, her brain putting two and two together in all the wrong ways. Her _obviously elven-made_ Familiar had stolen something. Then, for reasons unknown but easily derivable, it had gotten into a fight, proceeding to if not kill then at least seriously injure multiple people. She herself had stupidly helped it instead of putting a stop to it then and there, letting a spur of the moment dictate her entire future.

A fact which led her here, staring at what could be nothing other than pieces of an elven wand. It all made so much sense. An elven construct steals something which channels its magical power, which means that the item in question has to be a wand. Everyone else, naturally, tries to put a stop to this heretical affair, but not her. Oh no, not her. Instead she takes a shovel and digs herself deeper for all she's worth.

She couldn't go back now. The realisation was like a bucket of cold water dumped down her back. If she went back now, having consciously aided the Enemy, she would be expelled at best. Worst case, she wouldn't live to see the dawn. Louise knew what they did to heretics.

Her gaze turned, meeting Geth's puzzled look in her direction. That stupid golem. It had ruined everything! If it wasn't for her Familiar, she would be back at the academy, safe and sound and markedly not in any risk of execution. It was the most hopeless creature ever! It was-

 _It was quite possibly the only thing that wouldn't arrest her on the spot_.

Well, except for Cattleya, but that was rather beside the point; the realisation only added insult to injury. In a way, it almost felt liberating. The situation was hopeless. There was _nothing_ she could do to stop people from seeing her as a criminal heretic... so why even try fixing the situation? Her best hope was to roll with the punches and hope things worked out. Maybe she could just... move to Germania.

A laugh bubbled out of her. Just yesterday, the idea would have seemed ridiculous, but now... why shouldn't she? Nothing held her back anymore. They couldn't very well execute her more than once.

Some small part of her wondered if she was going insane. The rest of her just plain didn't care. So what if she was losing her sanity? She was going to die anyway, so why not enjoy things whilst she could?

Her saner side re-asserted itself. She could already think of several good reasons. For one, her mother would be the complete opposite of pleased, and Louise had no interest in being hunted down by someone as... capable as Karin was. She didn't want to let down princess Henrietta, either. They had known each other as kids and she just... didn't want to betray that trust like that. It really was that simple.

Something clicked in her mind. Of course. It was that simple.

"We're going to the capital", she stated, her tone brokering no argument. With the princess, she could maybe get a chance to explain herself and clear up this entire misunderstanding. Louise braced herself for the inevitable argument-

"Acknowledged."

-only to be caught off guard by an immediate agreement. She blinked, dumbfounded. Her Familiar was never going to make sense, was it? Part of her wanted to find out why it so readily agreed this time, but she didn't want to look the gift horse in the mouth for fear of changing its mind. She watched it put the wand-bits back into its hole, and then moved to open the building's sole door, knowing that the bigger their head start, the better their chances of not getting caught and executed. Geth may have managed to suppress the pursuing mages fairly well in the open, but now that they were in the forest, people were no doubt going to be looking for the both of them.

The two of them set off, Louise taking the lead in a direction she very much hoped was correct. Geth followed without complaint, occasionally tapping out something on its magical arm-projection as they went or stopping to wave it around.

"So," Louise began about twenty minutes later, having had some time to calm down. Despite her fairly fervent desire to ignore the fact she was walking with an elven-made creature, her idle brain was conjuring up questions she couldn't ignore.

Despite the elf-wand's heretical nature, she did admit to being a tiny teensy bit curious. With the way her explosive magic had reacted to Geth's own, strange spell back before the whole calamity with the wand, and with the seeming similarity between said magic and the odd field the wand-bits had made, she couldn't help but wonder. Would her own magic, in the hands of the elven wand, succeed where a normal wand's aid had failed? If her magic could be shaped to pierce instead of blast apart, who knew what else it could do with it?

The thought was heretical. The implications if it actually worked, problematic at best. Any true church of Brimir would see the offending item burnt along with its wielder. Still, given her situation...

"Could I... use that wand?"

Geth's response was fairly predictable and, admittedly, made Louise feel somewhat foolish for trying to get a sensible answer out of the golem given their track record.

"We do not understand. This unit possesses no 'wand'."

Rephrasing her question, Louise tried again. It usually took a few tries to get a good answer.

"You have wand-bits", she began. Geth looked like it was about to object, but the pink-haired noble would have none of it.

"Yes you do, don't deny it. I saw them back in that... ruin."

"Those were element zero compo-" the golem tried to protest nonetheless. It did not get far.

"I know they're wand bits. I saw you cast magic with them. Would they... work for me too?"

Louise couldn't help it; her assertive tone dwindled into hesitance near the end. A lot hinged on the coming words, and the fact that Geth gave no immediate answer didn't help her anxiousness in the slightest.

Finally;  
"They require assembly."

"So that's a yes?!" Louise all but shouted. After all this time, would she finally be able to be a proper mage? Geth looked momentarily taken aback at her... notable reaction, but Louise didn't care. She'd get that wand, and then she'd show everyone that she was a true mage whether they liked it or not. Some would say that she had bigger concerns right now, but this was an opportunity that she would not miss.

"Additional materials are required", it objected. The aspiring mage was not deterred.

"If you got those, could you put it together?"

"Yes"

The statement was simple, yet did wonders for cheering up the petite void mage. Had she known what Legion was _actually_ planning to build, she probably would have been considerably less excited, but assumptions are what they are. She would get it what it needed, she decided. She would acquire an elven wand and, heretic or not, she would finally prove to the world that she was, would be and always had been a true mage.

Although... there was one more thing she wondered; one more question gnawing on her. With an elven golem more or less amneable to her questions, she had to know...

"Where are your creators, anyway?"

Thus it was that Louise asked... and the Geth explained.

 **End of File**

A/N: Canon divergence is a-go. I know it's been half a year since the last update, but the story ended up on the backburner due to real life business (plus the fact that the first half of it fought me quite a bit). Brimir be willing, the next chaper should be out more swiftly than this one.


End file.
